Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000512 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 #:
000512
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 L P And remember .... this is Berlin of the New School. You will know what to expect. Now, as to Berlin of the Old School, if you can bear it any longer, stay with me awhile. The title is all too suitable. It is called The Diary of a Lost One, Pabst directed it, Sepp Algeier was the cameraman, Louise Brooks was the star, and Valeska Gert outshone her. If you care for the .whole story, sets were by Erno MetznerEmil Hasler, and Mark Sorkin assisted together with Paul Falkenberg. Certainly Margarete Bohme's popular romance did not seem ideal content for a Pabst film. You must either, it has been shown, be cynical about a Lost One or sentimental. If you are impersonal simply, you are going to get into trouble with the censor. That Pabst remained considerably so is perhaps borne out by the fact that the film we see is his minus several hundred metres. It is partly on this account that it does not cohere. However, though not good as a whole, indeed far from it, it does give us some of the finest work he has done. The best is that which deals with the routine of life in a reformatory for Lost Ones. These astounding scenes, dominated by A^aleska Gert, have all the epigrammatic wrath, so to speak, that almost Delphic quality w^hich Pabst alone possesses. The perception that has built these scenes of riotous, monotonous, remorseless speed into one hair-raising, monstrous quietude, has given all that can be given. This is Pabst. A knowledge of minds, of motives, a beyondness of seeing that spills no honey-flavour over what he has to 354