Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1933
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00027
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
As an active film magazine, CLOSE UP lasted only a short time, from 1927 to 1933. Yet the legacy of this English-language periodical, which was published in Switzerland, continues to matter. Edited by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson, CLOSE UP became THE magazine for energetic debates about the nature of cinema and manifestos imagining new forms of filmmaking and spectatorship. The magazine published articles by filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, and female literary modernists, such as H.D. and Gertrude Stein. As film scholar Anne Friedberg explains in the anthology CLOSE-UP, 1927-1933: CINEMA & MODERNISM, 'CLOSE UP became the model for a certain type of writing about film -- writing that was theoretically astute, politically incisive, critical of films that were simply 'entertainment.' For six and a half years, CLOSE UP maintained a forum for a broad variety of ideas about the cinema; it never advocated a single direction of development, but rather posed alternatives to existing modes of production, consumption, and film style.' Like Friedberg's own writing, CLOSE UP continues to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film and media theory. -- Eric Hoyt, 2014
Date Added:
November 07, 2023
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PSEUDOMORPHIC FILM " I was at the first-view of the Eisenstein drawings at the Becker Galleries in New York. In passing it can be remarked how many galleries in America are run for social publicity. But the Eisenstein drawings are carried out boldly in black chalk with red for blood. All of the bull-rings in Mexico. Psychologically interesting as well as artistically." Francis Bruguiere saw more than the Russian master's sketches in New York. He has the camera-eye : while on his recent trip, he edited sensations to pace them with film nerves. His impressions make a Vertoff document, scenario-prompting with social consequence. " Hope, still ! When first you come into New York harbour you see GASOMETERS. As good as "those of the Gas, Light and Coke" Co. in England. So progress has been maintained ! Lots of people begin waving too early at NEW LAND and have to keep it up. Quarantine officers, in picturesque poses, drift by in their inefficient and dirty boat. " West Side of New York — isn't this the city which Russia dreams about? Garbage cans taking wings with escaping paper-filth and kids playing among the tissues of smells. Cobblestones which never fit the environment they are supposed to project. Tenement houses with corks jammed into possibilities of the house-telephones ! " It must always be in a political programme that the subways fares are five cents, any distance. Folk beg for subway fares in order that they may keep warm at night. Street cars are getting older and noisier every year, while the rest of the world gets older and poorer. " Fifth Avenue. Radk> City (now Rockefeller Centre). Savoy Plaza Hotel. The broken fountain where the babies of the rich' are laid in tiers to play. The banks where the whole staff act a show, turning over flower catalogues and such, if you go in to do any business. . . There is only this small section of New York which sets out to make eye-dazzle with skyscrapers : if you look up at the skyscrapers your eyes become blinded with anthracite dust ! The higher you live in a skyscraper, and avoid more smells of petrol and noise, the more expensive it is : there are clouds round the tops of some of the buildings. Rates have been halved : people pay in writing ! Still, the Empire State Building, which was built to take 80,000 people, has only 300 tenants. Silent City of the Air ! This is the end of skyscraper construction in New York — at least for some time. Nights bring dark, unoccupied skies ! Interior lighting, to match the world depression, is universally amber ! "Streets of New York, to-day! On the sidewalks someone always slips dead to the pavement — starvation cases. Organised rackets : one man rescues a passer-by from a bully. If the passer-by does not show gratitude with a money gift, a third pal approaches and lays him flat. 19