Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000570 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 #:
000570
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
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 been too submissive to the director, although frequently I have felt Werner Krauss setting the pace for his regisseiir. It is very likely that the German actor will elucidate for the director his legitimate art, by clarifying for him the nature of cinema performance. The German director has been, like the German schoolmaster of the past, the sort of disciplinarian who believes in getting the most out of his pupil. He demanded Mehr, mehr ! So that very often the actor became apoplectic. Jannings and Veidt are typical instances. Fortunately, in The Last Laugh the co-ordination and convergence of the environment upon Jannings served as a rein and Jannings was brought back into the film and a powerful unity was preserved. In this consideration, I mentioned at several points the bluntness of German presentations as revealed in their moralizations, in their fantasies, etc. I assemble these evidences of bluntness under the general head of simplism. It is a term I have used many times in these pages, and which, I believe, my readers will understand by connotation. If we take the fantasy of Caligari and compare it with that of Die Hose we will note the difference in the categories. CaligarVs narration contains no intricacy, no larger reference . . . it is Peer Gynt without the philosophy and the poetry of the Ibsen drama. Am I stretching my comparison ? Certainly, deliberately. I wish to indicate where the Germans have gone for their experience of the fantastic. To Torgiis. These fantastic narratives — these fantastic films, ended with themselves. Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher rises to a sense of universe-torment. Stiller's The Treasure of Arne was the poignancy of the primitive. Yet 396