Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000332 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 #:
000332
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP ends well. But if it fails, to what cause does the director attribute the failure? Perhaps he may attribute it to the minor items — such as the story, actors and actresses, cameras, etc. — which are so vociferously discussed and argued by most critics. To speak the truth, it is the director who is all responsible for the failure or ill-success of a film. I am one of those who have groaned under the w^eight of similar responsibility, and I am aware that the failure is not owing to such minor causes, but lies in the film construction itself, which must be the more fundamental problem. And this fihii construction depends upon what I call " musical elements and structure of the film." It is after my commencing the musical analysis of the cinema that I have been gradually enabled to explain the causes of cinema failures and criticize properly some other films but mine. Now when I direct a fihii production, I deem it necessary to consider the fihii construction first, and then examine whether it is musical or not, and lastly revise the story, if necessary. The reader must know that there is no professional continuity writer " in Japan. How is it, then, that I manage to adjust the film construction to music by comparing both film and music? vSome may refute me by saying that a film is a film, and music is music. But I believe that the film has much of musical structure, and too much quality, form, and combination to be compared with anything else. Both music and film must be the main sources of those pleasures which are conveyed to hearing and sight respectively. Let me sa^' a few words as regards the analytical explanation of film and music, and compare them in brief. 60