Charles Pathé was a French motion-picture producer, who pioneered the development of the documentary film and founded PathéPathe Journal, the most famous newsreel.
Background
Pathé was born onDecember, 26, 1863 in France. He was from Alsatian parents in Chevry-Cossigny, Seine-et-Marne. His father, Jacques Pathé and mother, Thérèse-Emelie Kech, were butchers by trade. Charles had three brothers and two sisters.
Education
Pathé left school at 14 to work as an apprentice butcher, at rue de Charenton, Paris.
Career
He was among the first to film actual events. In 1866 the family moved to Vincennes where, in 1896 Charles and his brothers established Pathé Frères, a firm devoted to the production of phonographs and motion pictures. After two of the brothers dropped out, Émile (third brother) took charge of the phonographs, Charles the films. The first films were 50 to 60 feet (15-18 meters) in length, occupying less than a minute of screen time. Besides trick-filled fantasies modeled after those of the innovative film maker George Melies (1861 - 1938), Pathe filmed unstaged scenes (actualitésactualites): The Catastrophe at Martinique, The Dreyfus Affair, and The Boer War. In 1900 Ferdinand Zecca, Pathe's principal director, produced The Fantastic Diver, in which, by reversing the film, the diver returned to the diving board. In 1905 Louis Gasnier, another of Pathe's directors, produced The Bicycle Thief, a chase film of the type later associated with the American director Mack Sennet. The same year Max Linder appeared in The Life of Polichinelle, and soon became one of Pathe's major stars. In 1908 the PathéPathe News was founded and in the same year appeared The Assassination of the Duke of Guise, the first historical film with pretensions to historical accuracy; also in 1908 Pathé sponsored the beginning of scientific motion pictures with subjects photographed by Dr. Jean Comandon through a microscope. In 1927 Pathé and the Eastman Company made an agreement by which PathéPathe ceased producing raw film. He retired in 1930. In 1956 his company was absorbed by Warner Brothers Pictures.
Achievements
Connections
At age 30, Pathé married lle Foy in Paris, and worked as a clerk, drawing a meager salary.