Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000316 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000316
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 Pudovkin, take his angry man and roaring lion. You see him angry, so you know that. He is in fury. And fury itself is brought out, reached, by the lion, the most furious noise. Man and lion meet in fury. Fury in the abstract. We get it through man, lion. Fundamentals, if you like. That's the new cinema, or the full cinema. Two arms instead of one. On top of this trend, there is the cinema. Right from the start, before imagery was realised, it made no difference between woman and wall. It ALLOWED no difference. They were both image. As I said over Seastrom, lover and landscape both participate, belong, answer and express the same thing. We are aware of one in the other, this in this and this over this, till can we really be sure which we are seeing except that we are seeing what is there, and the parts don't matter, though they are exquisite? It is the same that inspires the Roman Catholic to see divinity in the bread, and the puritan, because he sees evil everywhere, to see it in a silk stocking. Therefore, whv bother to hear Amiee Macpherson in a talkie, when what we want to fit her is a good business talk from Mr. Selfridge? When sound is grasped, you will be able to use it so quietly, so lightly, so overw^helmingly. All the sounds there are at the service of your pictures. And even before he starts, Pudovkin is thinking of sounds that are not, yet. He will distort sound, and Meisel is going to compose sound straight. Take the oral impact of two objects and compose it in the same way as the visual impact is composed. He is going to make a new kind of music. He can m.anipulate the lamp which makes the sound waves light waves on the film. And others go on making hundred per cent, squawkies and don't care in the least that 42