Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00059 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 #:
00059
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 pig* factory and this again is cross cut with a china pig, with emphatic head, revolving. After much opposition a tractor is ordered. The harvest is too plentiful to be gathered bv hand or b}^ primitive means. But the tractor does not come. Finally, ^larfa and some villagers travel to the city to obtain it. During their absence the rich peasants poison Fomka. Marfa arrives in the city to find the Russian offices in a state peculiar to bureaucracy, many clerks, much bustle but no organisation. She makes so much stir that with the help of the city workers who had spent their holidays in the village, she obtains the order for immediate deliverv of a tractor. The scenes in the office are conventionalised into almost static types. (Marfa's energy against this registers so acutely one becomes almost sorry for the officials I) She returns to the village waving two balloons. She meets a friend, but the friend drops the head. Not, not Fomka? Yes. Fomka is dead. The performance is repeated, but with head unbowed and balloons flying ^larfa walks on to her own vard. There she falls grieving, face downwards. But Fomka's calf trots up to lick her face. Fomka is dead, but the commune lives. The village band in a hay wagon assembles to greet the tractor. This, again, is one of the finest moments of the film. Amid speeches, cheers, and excitement the tractor plunges down the hill, sticks, refuses to move. There is gradual consternation, laughter, and the villagers drift aAvay. Only ^larfa remains faithful, and watches beside the mechanic who throws off his holiday apparel and finds oil in the wrong place in the machinery. He uses up his own 37