Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00091 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 #:
00091
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 There is a time for everything. Audible pictures were possible fifteen years ago. That far agone Thomas Edison had perfected a device for synchronizing sound and motion on the screen. But the time was not ripe for it. The necessity had not yet arisen to call it into being. Silent pictures were then still completely satisfying. Moreover, they were pregnant with stimulating promises. They were growing, expanding, flowering. There appeared to be no limit to their powers of entertainment and the possibilities inherent in them. Who cared if the sense of hearing was ignored if the eye could be feasted with pictures of a world in motion ? — with animated portraits of heroic men in thrilling action, and lovely women parting their lips in enchanting smiles or shedding tears that actually trickled before our sympathetic gaze or dropped into the soup to tickle our primitive sense of humour ? Why add a perfume to the nodding violet or a rumble to the rushing locomotive? Enough was enough. But now the talkies — born of the necessity for satisfaction after the eventual failure of the mute screen longer to entertain and amuse. Gone now the glamour and the glory of the dummies. They have had their day. They are fading into historv ; as meagre now in their appeal as a white cotton stocking. Time moves; conditions change; novelty evolves into the commonplace and the boresome. There is a limit to all things. And there's the rub. Already it is realized that the talkies are but a stop-gap. Time to-day does more than merely move. It gallops; it flies; it has taken to itself the wings of the morning. In its onrush it is harrying the world w^ith restlessness ; with