Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000470 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 #:
000470
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 UP suicide in time to save the wrongly-accused boy friend. It could have been made into a fair picture, but for the delightful way in which the director made all the players go through their stuff in the best Elephant and Castle manner, flinging their hands about and shaking their heads as though they w^ere playing to a couple of love-birds at the back of the gallery. But, it has sound technique. Nearly all the long shots are silent picture material, and the 100 per cent, dramatic dialogue " consists .of close-up cuttings. The delicious wav in which a noisy jazz band is synchronised with the inevitable long-shots, only to be completely cut out from talking closeups of people supposed to be sitting on top of the dancers, is too funny to miss. Mr. Greenwood assured the Press, incidentally, that his was perhaps the only film for which the music had been specially written in, line for line, scene for scene. We can only hope they never let it occur again. To repeat the dialogue would be asking for trouble. It has to be heard to be believed. At the end of the picture — as we thought — the madman's father is acquainted of the fact that his son has just stolen his pistol and has taken it into the garden. " You hear that, James?" he repeats to his brother, he has a revolver." Maybe it was not James. No one really cared. Nearly 12,000 feet, and the greatest talking picture ever. Hugh Castle. 332