Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000259
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:
August 29, 2022
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 absolute or unavoidable. To create an operative unity in the cinema certain cares will need to be taken. If the writer referred to above is not entirely correct in his assertion, still within his statement there is discoverable the point of view for the compound him. The compound picture will need to be preconceived on the basis of one sense. That one sense will in itself be no simple sense. The film is not simply a visual medium : this needs to be said again and again. The film is visual-motor. The rhythmic pattern of the sound film will be conceived, as is the silent film (ideally), upon a visual-motor graph. Time and space are its structural elements. Upon these bases are imprinted the emphases of pitch (light sound), distribution (color-values, sonal tones), etc. Time and space, visual-motor fundaments, determine, however, the placements of these emphases. They colnprise within themselves : scale, duration, alternation, counterpoint, simultaneity, climax . . . The film contains also elements that are visual and that are visual-tactile (textural), as w^ell as — in the sound film — those that are sonal ; but these elements must be submissive to the visual-motor. In this way, may I call for Mr. Betts? The film remains a film — but that isn't really so very important. i What is a more important cosmic ^Mr. Betts still waxes courageous against the sound film. What he still attacks is the stupid uses of the sound fi'm to date and the unjustifiable suppression of the silent film. And shews thereby he condemns the compound film. When suddenly he says : They (the Russians) are experimenting on different lines and putting sound in its proper place, as an adjunct to the film instead of the film being an adjunct to the sound." Then Mr. Betts is in favor of sound properly used? He goes on to entomology, with that cute irrelevance of English thinkers : "If the fly as it moved on, uttered a little squeak, do you imagine it would become more of a fly in consequence? Xo, it would become more of a nuisance." Is Mr. Betts implying that the silent film is nuisance enough? -i y