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 #:
000463
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Early Cinema, Global Cinema, and Switzerland
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 I know of film lovers who are awed, at moments, by the talkies. They felt quite happy about silent Pudovkins, they knew how silent films tried to deceive the public, but not, of course, them : now, when listening to a gentleman say I can't go on they are troubled with a doubt, a deadly doubt that they are as much in the dark about this new form of the art of light as their neighbour. After reading ]Vlr. Cameron's manual they will be freed from inhibition, in fact they will feel an itch to run behind the scenes and help the operator in tim^es of stress. It is all rather matter of fact, but the four hundred pages give the reader a real line-up. The history of the talkie began to be hectic in 1873 when Willoughby Smith demonstrated, to the world of Science, the properties of selenium ; which alters its resistance to an electrical circuit as light fluctuates on it. He exhibited, also, that varying heat in light rays, falling on such a substance as lamp black, caused alternate expulsions and absorptions of gas. Professor Bell stepped into the dim limelight, which haloes the heads of those in the world of Science, with his " Singing Arc ". It was Ruhmer who first applied these discoveries to the cinema, although, as Mr. Herring might say, that sentence has nothing to do with the rest of the article. The beginner will be grateful to ^Iv. Cameron for giving the schoolroom laws of sound, a most forthright section which follows the history. The difference between longitudinal waves and transverse waves (well, you'd be surprised) ; telegraphy and telephony ; the common vacuum tubes ; light sensitive cells, as the photoelectric cell, by means of which common print can be read to the blind, the 325