Gaumont SA () is a French film and television production and distribution company headquartered in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France."Contactez-nous ." Gaumont. Retrieved on 2 March 2010. Founded by the engineer-turned-inventor Léon Gaumont (1864–1946) in 1895, it is the second film studio after The Black Maria and the oldest extant film company in the world, established before other studios such as Pathé (founded in 1896), Titanus (1904), Nordisk Film (1906), Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Nikkatsu (all founded in 1912).Richard Abel, The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914, University of California Press, 1994, p. 10,
Gaumont predominantly produces, co-produces, and distributes films, and in 2011, 95% of Gaumont's consolidated revenues came from the film division."2011 Gaumont Revenue statement" The company is also a producer of TV series through Gaumont Télévision and animation through Gaumont Animation as well as its existing French production features. Gaumont is run by Nicolas Seydoux (chairman) and Sidonie Dumas (CEO). Iconic for its daisy logo, the company holds a library of over 1,600 films, including hits like Intouchables and The Fifth Element. The company has six offices in five countries, and also has specific teams for its non-French units.
History
Originally dealing in photographic apparatus, the company began producing short films in 1897 to promote its make of camera-projector. Léon Gaumont's secretary Alice Guy-Blaché became the motion picture industry's first female director, and she went on to become the Head of Production of the Gaumont film studio from 1897 to 1907. From 1905 to 1914, its Cité Elgé studios (from the normal French pronunciation of the founder's initials L-G) in La Villette, France were the largest in the world.
World domination
In 1907, Alice Guy left Gaumont and recommended Louis Feuillade to Léon Gaumont as her successor, a decision he accepted and never regretted.
In 1908, Gaumont released La Fantasmagori, directed by Émile Cohl, considered the first animated film.
In 1909 the company participated in the Paris Film Congress, a failed attempt by European producers to create a cartel similar to that of the MPPC in the United States.
Gaumont also launched into movie theaters around 1908. In 1911, Gaumont opened the largest cinema in the world, the Gaumont Palace, which was located in Paris and had up to 6,400 seats. It was demolished in 1973.
In 1913, Louis Feuillade, artistic director of the company, persuaded Léon Gaumont to acquire the rights to the Fantômas series of novels. The adaptation was a significant success. Feuillade's Fantômas, regarded as the first cinematic serial, marked a major turning point in film history. The series not only enabled the Gaumont company to compete with Pathé, the global leader in cinema at the time, but also launched the popularity of the cinematic serial and played a key role in popularizing suspense and detective thrillers, genres that were relatively uncommon at the time.
In 1913, Gaumont introduced Chronochrome, one of the very first color film processes created directly during shooting rather than by coloring after filming. This innovation was developed by Léon Gaumont himself, who had long harbored the ambition of bringing color to motion pictures. Chronochrome was an additive process based on the simultaneous recording of red, green, and blue. To reduce stress on the film during projection, the image height was reduced from four to three perforations, creating a widescreen format similar to 16:9. Extremely costly, Chronochrome did not end black-and-white filmmaking but brought significant prestige to Gaumont and to Léon Gaumont personally.
From 1914 to 1915, Léonce Perret took over as artistic director of Gaumont after Louis Feuillade's departure for the front. Feuillade was demobilized in 1915 due to heart problems. He took the opportunity to return to the Gaumont studio, and Perret continued his career in the United States a few years later. At the same time, competitor Pathé was preparing to release its cinematic serial The Perils of Pauline in France, after the huge success of the saga in the United States. Léon Gaumont then commissioned Feuillade to create a series to counter that of Pathé, which gave birth to the director's most iconic work: Les Vampires, a cinematic serial of ten episodes, released at a rate of one per month. Filming conditions, in the midst of the First World War, were particularly difficult, since the actors could be mobilized at any moment. Gaumont and Feuillade adapted by masking secondary characters, or by killing off protagonists whose actors were going to be mobilized. The script was created day by day to be able to adjust. Les Vampires became one of Gaumont's biggest successes and popularized the archetype of the femme fatale throughout the world, thanks to the character of Irma Vep, played by the actress Musidora.
Gaumont opened foreign offices and acquired the theater chain Gaumont British, which later notably produced several films directed by Alfred Hitchcock such as The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938). Along with its competitor Pathé Frères, Gaumont dominated the motion picture industry in the world until the outbreak of war in 1914.
Logo History:
After the First World War, Gaumont suffered economic losses owing to increased competition from American Hollywood productions. In 1925, the studio's output decreased to only three films. In addition, Gaumont was unable to keep pace with the cost of technological changes, e.g., the advent of sound movies.
In 1927, Warner Bros appropriated the invention of talking pictures with the film The Jazz Singer, although Léon Gaumont had succeeded in making sound films as early as 1902 with his invention, the chronophone, which Alice Guy used extensively by shooting hundreds of phonoscenes. Thanks to the patents he had filed at the time, the Gaumont company filed a complaint against Warner Bros and, after a legal battle lasting nearly 20 years, won the case.
Difficulty
Struck by mounting debts in the early 1930s and the effects of the Great Depression, Gaumont declared bankruptcy in 1935. In 1937, the studio ceased production and operated only as a theater and distribution company. The company was purchased by the French corporation Havas in 1938, was renamed Société Nouvelle des Etablissements Gaumont, and reopened its film production studio.
During the Second World War, Gaumont was severely affected by censorship, with all of its films produced before 1937 being banned and withdrawn from circulation. The company’s production capacity was greatly reduced during this period, and it was forced to contend with a new competitor endowed with considerable resources, Continental Films, created by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Despite these constraints, Gaumont nevertheless managed to produce nine films between 1942 and the liberation, including Les Cadets de l’Océan by Jean Dréville and Le Journal tombe à 5 heures, the first film produced by Alain Poiré, who would later become one of Gaumont’s most prominent producers. At the time of the Liberation, Gaumont reported 240 employees killed or missing since the beginning of the war, as well as several cinemas destroyed.
In 1947, the company released Antoine et Antoinette, which became the first major post-war commercial success produced by the group. The film was produced by Alain Poiré, who had by then taken over as head of the company’s production division.
During that time, Gaumont partnered with Compagnie Parisienne de Location de Films to produce and distribute films and co-marketed together, until CPLF was renamed to Gaumont Distribution. However, the global interest in French New Wave films in the 1950s, as well as the permissiveness within French films (e.g., nudity), allowed French productions to successfully compete against an American cinema that was still burdened by conservative moral codes. The period was to see the return to prominence of Gaumont Studios.
New growth
In the 1960s, Gaumont's production division recovered with the success of Les Tontons Flingueurs, as well as numerous successful films starring the famous French actor Louis de Funès.
In 1970, media tycoon and French old money heir multimillionaire Nicolas Seydoux started managing Gaumont and becomes a vice-president at the company. Within two years he puts into place a restructuring phase and halted its productions, with Seydoux imposing his veto on certain projects. he personally owned 60% of the shares and 70% of the votes. It was likely that the new policy imposed was to change its production structure, with less "mainstream" films. Although he had a significant number of box-office hits, Alain Poiré had his place in danger, following the failure of Rum Runners, which was a costly production.
In 1972, Schlumberger put up Gaumont for sale: Rum Runners didn't help recoup its losses. Ambitious producer Jean-Pierre Rassam intended to acquire Gaumont with Seydoux and Toscan du Plantier and had promised various projects to bail out the company, but the balance sheet of his company Ciné qua non did not play into this his favor between the budget overruns or commercial failures of the films Chinese in Paris, Don't Touch the White Woman! and Lancelot du Lac.. The Schlumberger group sells its shares, estimated at 40%, to Nicolas Seydoux and Daniel Toscan du Plantier.
With these events, Nicolas Seydoux succeeds his brother Jérome Seydoux at the front of the company. The policy he undertook reconciled popular films and those with a more restricted audience: Alain Poiré ultimately remained in his position, to continue the production of major popular films, and Seydoux appointed Daniel Toscan du Plantier as its general manager. René Bonnell, Gaumont's distribution director from 1978 to 1982, explains that Seydoux had to coexist a Tuscan du Plantier, who arrived in 1976-1977 and who wanted to change everything, with a more traditional Poiré. On the economic level, Poiré was the financial support of the group thanks to all its big successes (La Boum, La Chèvre, the Belmondo films etc.), and their theatrical runs in the halls was modernized by Nicolas Seydoux. Concerning Toscan, that the economic balance of his interventions was proven, but he was the essential complement, young, open, to a house which needed this touch of madness. A house whose imaginary value, apart from balance sheet values, was increased by this extraordinary abundance around Tuscan.
Between 1974 and 2000, the production division achieved numerous successes, producing and distributing French films that went on to become cult classics, such as the trilogy "Now Where Did the 7th Company Get to ?" which parodies the total defeat of French troops against German troops during the beginning of the Second World War, the first films of Luc Besson, which were shot in English and most of them with an American cast, such as Subway, Léon the Professional, The Big Blue, The Fifth Element or even La Femme Nikita. Gaumont also produces a huge number of cult comedies in France, notably La Chèvre, Les Visiteurs, Le Grand Blond avec Une Chaussure noire ans Le retour du Grand Blond and The Dinner Game ("Le Dîner de Cons") not to be confused with the American remake "Dinner for Schmucks" which is not produced by Gaumont and which received negative feedback.