Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000419 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000419
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 I'P scenes are laved out with an eye to composition. The pictorial values are sound, if of the picture-postcard type. This is a candy-box picture. As such it is a sound piece of work. The sound, too, is used quite neatlv. It is not dragged in to remind the audience that the orchestra are on the dole. It helps the so-called storv. A curious picture. A difficult piece of work to sum up. It proves, first and foremost, the imbecility of letting one man make a picture and another cut it. The day will come w^hen the professional editor is unknown in our studios. When that happens we may make commercial pictures which don't insult the intelligence of a whelk. But we shall have to get some more good directors, first. Secondly, it proves the fact, w^here the commercial or propaganda cinema is concerned, that you can't make bricks without straw. Whoever selected Hardy's book as a film story ought to be politely pensioned off by some well organised charity. Lachman once made a short film called Wine and Water. A simple, elementary piece of work, it was shown at the Film Society, where it proved highly popular. It show^ed an eye for types, real types, a sense of camera, and an ability to make entertainment without a story but with one solitary idea. One day British International will give him a story. He will then produce a picture. Until then he will continue wasting good touches on silly material. Under the Greenivood Tree is a picture to be seen. It teems with faults, but the direction transcends them. Gentlemen of the Press is as different from the Hardy film as anv two pictures could be. The one is an attempt to make 289