Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 00095 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 #:
00095
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 shots can be taken and still bring the actors and background distinctly before the audience, without the necessity for any emphasizing detail yiews. Furthermore, television is now so imminent that one of the largest Hollywood producing companies — Paramount-Lasky — taking time by the forelock, has acquired a half interest in a national radio broadcasting company in preparation for the approaching day when a picture will be projected simultaneously on a thousand screens throughout the country from a focal studio in Hollywood, Chicago, or New York. And only now comes news from Europe of an invention there that will replace the celluloid strip with one of paper capable of recording and projecting both pictures and sound. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the midst of its new prosperity Hollywood is nervous and unsettled. The insistent and increasing demand for talking films does not allow the marking of time to await the developments of to-morrow. Production must proceed, and plans laid, under the existing conditions of the moment. Yet every picture at present turned out, and every investment in service and equipment, is freighted with the uncertainty of chance. Even within the specific limits of the talking film, developments are so rapid that a yesterday's production is primitive and crude in comparison with the latest one of to-day, in its improved technique and mechanical betterment. The crowd is not interested in the problems of its amusement purveyors, nor sympathetic with their troubles. Moreover, the producers are themselves responsible for having cultivated an exacting taste, as well as a desire for novelty, on the part of their patrons, and if their patrons 65