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 #:
00038
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Early Cinema, and Global 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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THE YEAR OF THE ECLIPSE I shall use quotations from my correspondence to Close Up's last number for 1932 as keys to my first correspondence to 1933, since what I have to say grows frjom " Dog Days in the Movie." " The movie of delirium tremens — on near beer !" . . . The outlook for 3.2 per cent, brew is good. The difference between the promised and the present " near beer " brand is the quantity of hope in American breasts, deceived into that hope by the promise of a prosperity that will follow upon the liquidation of prohibition. Hoax upon hoax — the vision of the desperate ! And the movie is its immediate image. It reads concoction as experience, the momentarily effective as the memorable, or neglects the quality of the memory altogether. I asked : Is there really a fool born every minute, and how long can the movie wait till lie grows up, or shall it get him while he is still young?" (The printer put down " young " as " Avrong " — not an inaccurate error.) The fool to-day is not constantly foolish, his reaction cannot be counted upon as certainly as in earlier days. 1932 was the year of the eclipse, astronomically and in the cinema. Not even the attractiveness of Marlene Dietrich sustained Blonde Venus; it was removed from the Paramount Theatre before its engagement was really over. The crowd was as wise as the critic. The critic should have been wiser : he should have seen Blonde Venus in The Blue Angel and foretold the inevitable. Sternberg may succeed Pommer at U.F.A. That is ironical, because what is creditable in to-day's Sternberg is really Pommer. * # * The most painful partial eclipse was that of Lewis Milestone. Although Tom Buckingham was the accredited director of Cock o' the Air and Nate Watts the accredited supervisor, Mr. Milestone had a great deal to do with it. Its wretchedness was partly due to the delicate interference of the Hays troupe. But I am puzzled by the puerility of a field-general like Milestone, who uses his prestige and authority, his talent, to toss off rowdyisms stodgy and unprovocative. The fault seems to be the desire to repeat a previous success, Two Arabian Knights, just as in Rain, Milestone seems to have wanted another tour de force like The Front Page, a film of major importance in the history of the compound cinema. Others have observed two of Mr. Milestone's limitations : his belief that speech should be uninterrupted, his inabilitv to direct women. The first limitation deserves studv. In The Front Page Milestone correctly gauged the quantity of speech and its velocity (the relation of speech to visual-motor density) and thereby, for the first time, presented the principle that though the plane of correlation in the cinema is visual-motor, the vocal element in the compound may, if the subject-matter requires, set the pace for the unit. In this particular film (Milestone's milestone) the vehicle gave the cargo an appearance of sub