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 #:
000457
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
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CLOSE UP Proprietor of the restaurant inspects the shoes of his waiters to make certain that tiiey have rubber soles, which will not annoy the clients. Of course THE waiter has immense holes in his shoes. All the Wardour Street of Moscow^ dines at this restaurant if one is to judge by the types. That includes the villain and the general. And the waiter does all the wrong things, and looks pathetic because they curse him. At the end of a banquet he steals some of the fruit for his daughter, while he maintains his kittenishly pathetic appearance. His daughter plays the violin, his wife . . . well, she married him. Cat plays with a ball of wool ; the news arrives that the son has been killed in one of the snowed-in trenches. The son whom we have seen, and cannot worry about as we fear he may be like his father. The flavour is that of a Stephen Leacock version of a Russian novel. Mother falls in a fit. The waiter drops all the plates. His wages are stopped. He loses the chance to acquire a note for 500 roubles. Wife dies. Daughter is expelled from the Academy of music . . . Even in a Russian filmi this is full value for one's money. Mr. Protozanov, who directed, keeps up the misery with stolen documents, and a would-be raper of the fair daughter. Spider and the fly. You will know me by the orchid in my buttonhole, etc. ]\Ialinovskaja is the girl, Tchekhov the waiter. O. B. 319