Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000317 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 #:
000317
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 reproduction is still about as bad as an early gramophone. They want just to be literal, like the radio, and give us life or something odd like that. It does not matter how odd you are if you are literal. You make Al Jolson, how I love him, sing a song that makes the real audience at the Regal weep and dab, and you show the audience to whom he is supposed to have sung it to in the film rise up and cheer wildly and have a grand time, and the two audiences are quite at variance in their reactions to the same song, and the makers don't mind because it is all literal. But if, at the same time, you are neither odd nor literal, if you are logical, let alone psychological, they are up in arms. And what is the noise for that on a sound film ? Wild beasts, gladiators, weapons rattling ? Far too literal. How about " exit only, old clothes only, exit only, old clothes only " superimposed on to cries of been in this business since I don't understand please mummy why, the Lord said unto Closes ". Wells, I put it to you. This is your next book. After explaining what a good one it is, you lay the scenes. The Police of the World. Paul alone in Hyde Park. Noises of champagne corks and money clinking." But Wells would supermipose Mrs. Meyrick on this, and he really means " mix ", and I really meant to talk about Pudovkin. He said this, he said that. What did he think of English films ? Would he like to make a film of a Cup Tie? He said this, he said that. But he DID this and this to me. Isn't that more exciting? Can't you imagine for vourselves from this what a talk with him would be ? What it would do to you. Do you really want to know whether he likes being directed by Ozep, what he thinks of Anna Sten, if he minds 43