The video for Day 2 of Deadline Detroit's Old-Time Detroit Film Fest has no title.
It's a silent film from 1919 that serves as a travelogue of Detroit as the city nears the end of the second decade of its auto-industry boom.
With a choppy style that resembles an early Charlie Chaplin film, the travelogue includes Michigan Central Station; Belle Isle; Grand Circus Park; Wayne State University's Old Main building, which was then a Detroit high school; Eastern Market; Navin Field, the forerunner of Tiger Stadium, and other streets, parks, churches and factories.
With plenty of close-ups, the film also offers an insight into contemporary fashion and automobile style. And the title pages serve as a portal to Detroit with its chest puffed: Each page seemingly outdoes the previous one in bragging about the city's growth.
(Viewing note: The first minute of the film is heavy on title pages. But keep watching. The movie truly gets underway at the 1:25 mark. Also: The film carries a 1919 date, but there are references on the title pages to 1920.)
One title page proclaims: "Within the boundaries of the city, 'Where Life is Worth Living,'* are 1,088,853 people, 20,000 places of business, 2,600 major manufacturing plants and 180,000 home owners."
Especially notable: At the 2:44 mark, a street-cleaning truck sprays water on a busy street with the recently completed General Motors headquarters in the background.
The film was produced by Ford Motor Co., but other than a shot of its Highland Park plant, there is little indication the company designed the movie to serve as a marketing attempt.
Henry Ford was intrigued, though, by the possibilities of film, and he established a photographic and film department during the World War I era that became omnivorous in its subjects.
According to the website of the Benson Ford Research Center at the Henry Ford, in 1963, Ford Motor donated to the National Archives more than 1.5 million feet of motion picture film produced between 1914 and the early 1940s by the company's Motion Picture Department.
This film comes from that collection, via the San Francisco-based Prelinger Archives that is a repository of old videos and other historical matter.
The Deadline Detroit Old-Time Detroit Film Festival continues for the rest of this week. A new video will be posted each morning at about 11 a.m. Click here to see Monday's film, "Safety Patrol," from 1937.
* A Detroit slogan at the time.
