Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000179
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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP The mere watching of one scene from Interference, for example (the Lasky-Paramount first phonofilm), would have given the observer an entirely new conception of the painstaking effort entailed in producing pictures that talk. Roy J. Pomeroy, director of the picture, sits in a chair giving last-minute instructions to the players, Evelyn Brent and William Powell, featured with Clive Brook and Doris Kenyon in the film. Giant doors sw^ing shut at Pomeroy *s signal. A peculiar silence dominates the stage. Now and then a whispered conversation is heard. Voices trail off strangely ... all resonance and echo have been banished. Incandescent lamps flood the set with light. Strange camera tanks . . . soundproof booths . . . crouch on the edge of the set. Microphones are suspended over the players' heads. A pair of eyes look down upon the stage. They belong to an engineer who sits in a tiny room tucked up under the ceiling. It is isolated with plate-glass windows. The man studies the positions of the mikes.'' He is the mixer." He hears everything through giant horns. His duty is to regulate the volume of the voices that are picked up by the mikes." Downstairs a voice is heard over a telephone. It gives the magic word : Interlock !" The familiar cry of Camera !" is never heard here. " Interlock!" has supplanted it. It means that cameras and recording machines are synchronized and ready to go. A bell rings somewhere outside ... a signal for carpenters to cease work. Someone says : ^* Ready ! Quiet, please !" 41