Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00035 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 #:
00035
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 that in the simplicity and broad structures thev are easier movie stuff than a more intricate, and sophisticated material, but as the most general of folk affections, they naturally enter as the first materials to choose, particularly since the producer thinks of the talkie as the theatre's descendant. He may not be so wrong. It may be that there will be a form of the talkie that will continue the popular theatre. ^ For myself, I do not object, I do not find the popular talkie — the revue particularly — less attractive than the stage revue. Indeed, the former offers, even in the most banal of structures, a few combinations that the stage cannot achieve, for the stage has not the means for the concentrated bold image which alone permits the following treatment : in Gold Diggers of Broadway , while one performer sings, another goes through elastic dance movements, as if limbering up, behind the singer, to the theme of the song. Also, girls move regularly farther in the rear. This presents a threedistanced parallel, with the second image dimmer than the ^Have not the tendencies in modern theatrical production been toward cinematization ? Meierhold, Piscator, Granowsky, even Reinhardt, and even Gaston Baty. And to offer as a counterbalance to the sonorization of the mute, did not Gordon Craig favor the silencing of the" spoken drama." I am noting an early critic of the talkie. As far back as September, 1913, the dramatic critic, Walter Prichard Eaton wrote in Leslie's American : "A person is a person. A phonograph and a photograph are things. There is a certain fundamental difference which science has not yet succeeded in eliminating. Nor does putting two things together make a person. The result is still two things . . . the synchronization of phonograph and film will be less illusive than either film or phonograph by itself. ..." But then Mr. Eaton was down on the films generally; they had no third dimension — not very prophetic — and without words intellectual appeal was slight, and words did not belong. Sounds a little like 1929-30 among the steadfasts. B 13