Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1930
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00043
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:
November 03, 2022
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CLOSE UP a year's striving to reproduce on the screen the very noises which people go to the cinema in order to forget. Let it never be said that Elstree converted its studios into sound stages for nothing, let us never assert that they bought over all the B.B.C.'s wind machines and effects experts for no mean purpose. On the contrary, they imported them for Atlantic. Much could be said about this film. It's cinematic vision, its subtle — verv subtle — rhythms, its sound-cinema distortion, its stark realism. And the way it showed the undying heroism and stoicism of the Englishman Facing Death. It w'as unfortunate we saw it within a week of the Film Society's presentation of Potemkin. As it was, there w^as a tendency to compare Dupont and Eisenstein. But only a tendency. After Atlantic Dupont stands alone. All the same, Britain produced Blackmail. Take a mental fourth dimension. Twist it around the queues outside the Empire and bake gently for three hours. Stir with the plaintive w^ails of a sound track in pain, and add a flavouring of the Wall Street crash. Serve up hot on a warm plate and a cold dog. The result is Mickey Mouse running around Anny Ondra's legs during the breakfast scene in Blackmail, with Stepin Fetchit chasing the vermin across vigorous infinitv with a worn-out disc record. Spell it out in the billion colours of The Show of Shows and the umpteen-candle power lights of the Hollywood Revue, and you find Mary Pickford sitting down suddenly in the mud, on top of a chorus girl and a dying detective. 21