Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00036 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 #:
00036
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 fore-figure and the third dimmer than the middle image. This is a tinted film and, while it adds nothing but slight suspicions to motion picture art, is no worse than the usual spectacle revue. As I have said, I for one prefer it because movements banal in the theatre are frequently rendered attractive by the more perspicacious instrument, the camera, and its associated implements. Other devices becominggeneral in talkies are off-screen sounds, echoes w^hich have rhythmic possibilities, fades in-and-out of sounds, etc. The development of the talkie will be two-wise : as a more thrilling substitute for the quotidienal stage, and as an art in itself. I do not find in the slickness of Paris Bound or the more active, equally competent, Bulldog Drummond, anything to get excited over. The reiteration of columned, distributed German studio-lighting I find tedious, despite its competence.! Competence! the old sufficiency, the death of art — job-competence in America, aesthetic competence in Europe sometimes, but art the experience? Paul Fejos' Broadway is a director's show^-off stunt. It is the instance of a director succumbing to a specious vaunting of instruments, cranes and cameras. I suspected as much when I saw the photos of Fejos on the job with a battery of cameras. The Hollywood L'Herbier. Jean Dreville's Autour de V Argent was an advance give-away of U Argent, Effect-minds both, the director of U Argent and the director of Broadway . The effect, in the latter instance, ^The designer of this lighting is W. Cameron Menzies, who seems to hold first place in Hollywood esteem. 14