Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000319 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 #:
000319
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 score at his elbow. A few words of greeting and we were trundling along on the early morning local train to Berlin. A fe\v seconds after the aerodrome searchlight flashed in synchrony with the final chords on the piano, Herr Meisel v;as apologising for his digital delinquencies. But apart from the difficulty of doing justice to some passages of the score without an orchestra or an organ ; Mr. Ogilyie, too, was equally apologetic for the shortcomings of his piano. But being one of a group of three or four, alone in the centre of an otherwise empty hall, with Berlin on the screen and Herr Meisel sitting sentinel oyer its musical destiny, has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. Benefiting a great deal from Mr. Dobb's fluid conversational manner of enquiry, we heard a host of interesting things from the little man, with an almost elfin humour, and as much enthusiasm, apparently, for the art of the films as for the art of his own sphere. The subject of music and the films yeered. " What did Herr ]\Ieisel think of Potevikin?'' " They have a great future . . . synchronised music would always be part of the film. The music would be the same in the cinema that can afford a full orchestra as in the tiny provincial hall with only a piano." When it was suggested that Berlin was the first essay in truly synchronised film he smiled appreciatively, but was silent. " Did he limit his meaning of synchronised sound to ' effects ' and ' orchestration ' ?" " Well, no . . . the voice, too, will improve a film when used for contrapiinct, as we say in miusic. Imagine the 45