“The Silent Celluloid Salesman” : How and why Ford Motor Company became the largest motion picture producer and distributor in the world

Abstract: This study explores the under-researched subject of “industrial films” through the analysis of how Ford Motor Company made use of motion pictures to reinforce its political and economic interests during the 1910s and 1920s. In 1914, the automobile company constituted a motion picture department, establishing itself as the largest film producer and distributor in the world in the subsequent years. Just as the famous Model T, Ford films were mass-produced and widely circulated; they praised the ideas of “Americanization” and “Americanism” as a strategy to shape Ford workers, intervene in public opinion against labour unions, and as a method of publicizing the company’s cooperation with the United States government during World War I. Despite the relevance of Ford’s unconventional cinema, distributed for free and exhibited in schools, universities, factories, and movie theaters, it still hasn’t received sufficient attention from scholars, illustrating the necessity of a holistic notion of film history, able to extrapolate the canons of fiction film and theatrical exhibition.