Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00026 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1930
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00026
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 Receptively, its effect was similar to the effect produced by shutting the ear off and on in an identical manner. That was an accident that occurs frequently, producing" an eft'ect which is suggestive of piecemeal utterance of oral, verbal sounds. Analytic sound. That is exactly the necessity : analytic sound, instead of duplicate. To-day the talkie has two divisions : all-talkie and part-talkie. It is apparent to us all, including Gilbert Seldes, that this is a mistake. An all-talkie is not a movie. Silent sequences are determinants. Indeed, even the practitioners recognise this, and ultimately the dialoguemovie is doomed. Or, shall I put it this way : the innovations brought into the present optophonic substitute for the stage-melodrama and revue tend to mobilize the images increasingly, not so much because the producers want it, as because the enterprises attract these devices of movement. Never before has the American film used multiple exposure so much or so well ; the revue attracts it as a novelty or " stunt." It is a little cloying because it simpers in the mood of the revue. In Paris Bound, the surimpressions had the accumulative effect of a vivacious mosaic. Entirely out of place in this stiff realistic play, but in themselves very successful. Totalities are not thought of in the present audible film." It is very fragmentary and possesses little structural plausibility. The present vogue is for the melodramatic play and the revue. ^ This is not simply for the reasons Seldes assigns: ^The social drama has its vogue too, but this is out-and-out substitute " electrical " theatre, better, however, than a phonographic substitute for the music-hall. 12