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The selection for the final day of Deadline Detroit's Old-Time Detroit Film Fest is rare footage from Ford Motor Company of Diego Rivera painting his murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932.
"Detroit Industry" is Detroit's most famous artwork; it is considered the finest example of Mexican mural art in the United States, and Rivera saw it as the best work of his fabled career.
Rivera designed the murals, officially known a "fresco cycle," as a tribute to the city's manufacturing base and labor force of the 1930s, a time of extreme unemployment and immense hardship in Detroit during the Great Depression. After researching operations at Ford's massive Rouge Plant, Rivera completed the 27-panel work in 11 months, from April 1932 to March 1933.
According to the DIA:
Rivera was a Marxist who believed that art belonged on public walls rather than in private galleries. He found his medium in the fresco, where paint is applied to wet plaster. Its vast size allowed him to explore grand and complex themes, which would be accessible to a large audience. In Mexico, Rivera's murals tied modern Mexican culture to its indigenous roots, revealing the ancient Indian cultures as Mexico's true heritage. Similarly, Rivera's Detroit Industry murals depict industry and technology as the indigenous culture of Detroit.
In the film, Rivera, who wears overalls and is almost never seen from the front, paints over the sketches, called cartoons, that have been drawn on the walls. An assistant can be seen wetting the plaster.
In one segment, Rivera paints the figures of workers in the lower portion of the north wall, which shows the production of the engine and transmission of the 1932 Ford V-8. (Late in the film, Rivera is seen painting the hatless man in the white shirt, at the center of the photo, left.)
The images of the workers in the north wall are actually portraits of Rivera's assistants and other people he met during his time in Detroit, according to the DIA. The man Rivera is seen painting was identified as an unnamed Ford Motor engineer.
Given Rivera's radical politics and some of the imagery in the murals, the artwork was extremely controversial when they were opened to the public in 1933. Both the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News condemned the work, and some religious leaders demanded it be destroyed.
Edsel Ford, the only child of Henry Ford, had invited Rivera to the city, and he rejected calls to demolish the murals.
The film is attributed to the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford established a motion-picture production unit in 1913, and the company's cameramen began traveling the world and the unit churned out films on topics from sales promotion to newsreels to features. According to historian David Lewis, by 1918, Ford Motor was the largest motion-picture distributor on earth.
To see a panoramic view of the murals as they look today, click here.
Deadline Detroit's Old-Time Detroit Film Fest concludes with Friday's video. Below are the films from the previous four days:
Day 1: "Safety Patrol," a 1937 documentary about Detroit's patrol boys.
Day 3: Home Movies from Detroit's Monnier School, 1947
Day 4: This Is Your Detroit Police Department, 1951
