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 #:
000586
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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 LP With proper preparation, foresight, and knowledge it might easily have been made for less than one-fourth that sum. As a picture it lacks any of the elements of greatness. Its one redeeming feature is the spectacle of the race, which is undeniably a masterpiece of cinematic craft. And this, together with a clever exploiting of the stupendous cost of the picture, has ''put over " the film and made it a success. Why, then, be critical of Hollyw^ood extravagance? On the contrary, its exploitation as a means of turning a deficit into an asset — of raising a mediocre picture to the rank of a superlative production — cannot but challenge our wonderment and admiration, if not our envy. As already stated, Ben-Hur is not an exceptional case, save for the actual amount of extravagance and incompetence involved. Cinema history abounds in these examples of waste and prefatory failures in the filming of eventually successful pictures. Nor have the talkies, despite their inherent demand for more careful preparation, brought about any appreciable modification of this basic characteristic condition. Sometime next year the world will be regaled w^th a colourful musical production, under the probable title of The King of Jazz. It will be built about Paul Whiteman and his famous jazz orchestra. According to schedule, it should have been completed by this time. As a matter of fact, it has not yet started and has already cost its producers, the Universal Company, not less than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The terms of Universalis contract with Whiteman offer an interesting example of the extent to which producers will 412