PASSAGE B
Alice Guy’s confidence in her ability to write a story was one of the factors in Léon Gaumont’s granting her permission to make her first film. As she said, “In the beginning, everyone was always shooting street scenes, parades or moving trains, which I did not find terribly interesting. So one day I said to Monsieur Gaumont: ‘It seems to me we could do something better.’ Gaumont and Lumière were both inventors, and they were not interested in developing new possibilities. They were content with their technical achievement. Gaumont said to me: ‘OK . . . if you would like to . . . it’s a young girl’s thing! You want to make a film. You want to do something. Have you written a story?’, ‘Yes, I can write a story; I think I’m capable of doing something.’” Like many young people to this day who work at a second job to explore their independent creative work apart from the more quotidian ways of earning a living, Guy followed up Gaumont’s permission by working a second shift. And so, at the age of twenty-three, by her own account, Alice Guy made her first film, La Fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy).
The complexities of specifically dating her first film have puzzled historians. A more fundamental question seems to be this: how would a young woman, with no experience, have thought to suggest making a film, and one with a story? The short answer is that she asked and that Gaumont already had confidence in her administrative skills. The slightly longer version is that Gaumont had little reason to say no. Guy assured Gaumont that her filmmaking would not interfere with her secretarial chores. Moreover, what she proposed didn’t yet exist. At the time Gaumont saw motionpicture filmmaking as an adjunct to selling cameras, and the thought of projected motion pictures being a commercial endeavor as popular entertainment was not yet on the horizon. This “young girl’s thing”—what he may have meant by this specifically is not clear—seems to refer to something apart from the other uses of the motion-picture and other cameras, the scientific demonstrations, for example, in which Guy herself as well as Gaumont had taken part. Indeed, had commercial potential been envisioned permission might not have been so easily granted to her.
6. The main purpose of the last paragraph in Passage B is to:
F. describe how Guy’s filmmaking career came to an end.
G. detail Gaumont’s confidence in Guy’s technical abilities as a filmmaker.
H. explain why Guy was given the opportunity to make films.
J. clarify the differences between Guy’s and Gaumont’s work as filmmakers.
7. Details in Passage B most strongly suggest that Guy was initially employed by Gaumont as:
A. an inventor of cameras.
B. a camera salesperson.
C. a film publicist.
D. a secretary.
Questions 8–10 ask about both passages.
8. Compared to Passage B, Passage A provides more information about the:
F. complexities of identifying the early films of Guy and other filmmakers.
G. films Guy made with her husband later in her career.
H. process leading up to Guy making her first film.
J. tasks Gu
9. Which of the following statements is supported by both passages?
A. Guy made her first film at the age of twenty-three.
B. Guy believed that many films in the historical film archives were hers.
C. Guy wrote her memoir to reestablish her place in film history.
D. Guy helped to shape the role of filmmaker in the early days of film.
10. Which of the following statements best captures a main difference in the focus of the passages?
F. Passage A focuses on Guy’s overall importance to film history, while Passage B focuses on the details regarding her start in filmmaking.
G. Passage A focuses on Guy’s work in the early part of the twentieth century, while Passage B focuses on her work in the 1970s.
H. Passage A focuses on Guy’s work with Lumière, while Passage B focuses on her work with Gaumont.
J. Passage A focuses on Guy as a camera operator, while Passage B focuses on her work as a film producer.