Making an American Citizen

Alice Guy Blaché, 1912, Solax: an immigrant husband who beats his wife is taught, by force and by example, how men are expected to behave in America. A reel. Guy, working in Fort Lee, making an assimilation comedy that is also a lecture. The title is the curriculum. It is clumsy as drama and clear as a document of what a woman director thought the country was selling. The citizen is the husband. The teacher is the film.