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 #:
00030
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

22 CLOSE UP " Traffic in the roadway runs by lights. No driver looks at pedestrians, only lights. He who does not give his whole time to calculating the lights well, the papers publish a charming little clock called The Hands of Death .... In the taxis, as in the hotels, eternal radios play advertisements. Taxi boys are interested enough in the world depression to shout across the streets to foot-travellers — some of the things thev have to offer ! " Police cars clang past. Police use machine-guns, not pistols. I sawone gunman caught. Three standing near were shot down. Other civilians paniced against walls and called out to the police, " We are not communists, we are not communists ! . . . Fire engines sweep by : every hour there is a fire ! " From the Plaza stretches Central Park. Its stunted trees and rockgrown grass are generally covered with the 365 pages of the Sunday newspaper. There is no money to clean it up. They have made a film of it. " There are so many lights under the canopies of Broadwav's cinemas that the Broadway smell is quite one of the worst of New York's particulars. The morons, who ever tramp up and down Broadway, like best burlesque shows which are called ' strippers ' : girls undress while comedians make jokes about fairies. " In a rush now — because this pseudomorphic film is out-running its footage . . . There are no garages : you pay the policeman . . . There are one or two speakeasies off Broadway where one may walk up a sweeping staircase like a gentleman or a lady or both and peer down at statues of Dante. Most speakeasies, though, are popular because they are dirty and old : the aristocratic houses of yesterday with holes in the carpets. Weak California Wine . . . Harlem : concentration on music — then what a lot of spitting ! . . . What has been done for justice in New York has been done by the Jewish people . . . " Anyway, I feel that skyscrapers are only successful when they are not architecture, when they have no Renaissance tops. That is why I hope this account mav have slight virtue." O. B.