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45 Chapter 2 The Great War and Dulac’s First Films World War One was a “total war” that affected not just the life of combatants, volunteers, and conscripts, but also all aspects of the home front. In France, the war marked a fundamental rupture with the Belle Époque outlook of unchecked optimism about artistic creation, ever-expanding scientific and technological innovation, and universalist humanist progress.1 A “psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole,” it would have wide-ranging economic, political, and sociocultural repercussions, including a radical reorientation of the Women’s Progress movement, along with profound transformations across the visual and performing arts.2 With a preliminary separation from her husband, Albert, in 1913, and his successive mobilization to the front, the war also brought Dulac increased autonomy, exceptional access to a transitioning film industry, and the opportunity to refocus and refashion the means of her social and artistic intervention.3 An account of Dulac’s wartime experiences in this rapidly evolving environment helps us better understand the development of her oeuvre.4 Internationalist Pacifism and National Defense When the Germans invaded France in early August 1914, the cataclysmic and irreversible impact of the Great War or “der(nière) des der(nière)s” (the war to end all wars) on soldiers and civilians alike became immediately apparent. Like a majority of feminists of her time, Dulac, faced with the reality and the magnitude of this cataclysm, found herself between two contradictory positions: her universalist, pacifist ideals, dating back to her early activities at La Française (notably her 1907 lecture on the international task of Frenchwomen ), and the imminent concern for national defense, whose resonance 46 P A R T I / T H E G R E A T W A R A N D D U L A C ’ S F I R S T F I L M S in the government’s call for l’union sacrée (sacred union, or a united front in the face of the aggressor) rekindled some of Dulac’s early socialist ties.5 In the period immediately following the German invasion, Dulac’s pacifist objections receded into the background as she devoted herself to a range of war-related activities from humanitarian assistance (medical care, food banks) to counterpropaganda (correspondence, articles, and films). From August 1914 through April 1915, she organized soup kitchens for war victims’ families (on rue Cauchois in the heart of Montmartre), alongside Georgette Sembat, wife of cultural activist and socialist minister Marcel Sembat (with whom she had remained close since the anticlerical legislation with her uncle Raymond in 1905).6 Yet, just one month after the hostilities began, Albert encouraged her to look beyond such efforts “You’re right. The life of each and all, the fate of individuals and nations, poses moral problems and conflicts at each moment in these difficult times. [ . . . ] But seek out and listen to your instinct. You love Paris and the beautiful experience of its vibrating spirit. You feel a need to devote yourself and to be useful. But look further.”7 As the conflict raged, Dulac would turn toward more concrete intellectual and political activities, while also continuing to develop her creative projects. Her long-standing friendship with Sembat and several of his associates during this period (1912–19) also would intersect in auspicious ways with her new feminist and artistic orientations. In the context of the call for a union sacrée (a patriotic prowar consensus), Marcel Sembat was one of only two socialist ministers (or state secretaries, along with Marxist Jules Guesde [1845–1922]) to serve in the national unity cabinet headed by rightwing prime ministers René Viviani (1914) and Aristide Briand (1915). An anticolonialist, as well as an arts education, and worker’s movement activist, Sembat appears to have been an important mentor for Dulac, energizing and reinforcing her early intermedial, sociopolitical and pedagogical approach to the cinema and ciné-club activism.8 Noteworthy are Sembat’s passionate talks on contemporary art and literature (from fauvist and cubist painting to symbolist poetry), as well as his dinners and soirées, which Germaine and Albert Dulac had attended since before the war in the company of other artists and intellectuals (from Henri Matisse and Gustav Kahn to Anatole France). Sembat, also known for making art accessible to the people, as well as for having famously defended artistic freedom before the Assemblée nationale in 1912, played an instrumental role in the Salon d’automne...

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