Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

CLOSE UP left from a working copy wth flash Russian titles. My vision was as changed by that which I did not see as by that which I did see; still it remains a grand film. Not, in my opinion, as grand as Prison but overwhelming, nevertheless. I remember stretchers being carried in front of the lens, a crowded train, and Filimonoff pulling off boots from the feet of corpses. One man stirs, is alive. Instead of stealing boots from the dead Filimonoff gives legs to the living, carrying the man to his hut. Searchlights give depth to the picture, picking up plane after plane of soil. The man is almost dying in the hut. A bitch, in the corner, feeds her puppies. The man is almost dying, is hungry. He tears away the puppies; himself he takes the milk. This scene is not forgotten with its boldness of telling. A monocled officer enters, watches, aims a rifle, the dog is shot through the eye to the brain. Filimonoft' gives corn to the hungry man who eats like an animal. Cross cuts with the puppies and the dead mother. Filimonoff, peasant, giant, shaggy beard, cinematic eyes. He blows a paper boat across a newly washed floor ; he rings a little bell and laughs foolishly, lovably. He reacts spontaneously to everything ; to a cigarette box, to a woman in the train, to the stranger he finds in his hair. When he tries to think of the face of the woman in the train she appears so much more beautiful than in reality. The cigarette box distracts him; a cigarette box face. Turning the handle of a sewing-machine the pattern becomes closer as the handle turns faster ; till the thread rolls across the floor and the train rolls back in his mind. Battle memories are technically magnificent. The worship 31