Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000171 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 #:
000171
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 and estimated as to how much of the theme it finally convevs, even The Crowd, These are all fabrications rather than conclusive experiences. Seldes unwittingly exposes the real fault of the Mamoulian treatment, which just about steps over the boundary out of virtuosity: " Mr. Mamoulian has made all his comments cinematically." The key is in the word comments. There are comments here with no major structure to be commented upon. The most important film I have seen since my return — the most important American film that is — has been laughed at, sneered at, reviled by spectators, either ignored or utterly condemned by critics (critics, indeed !). It is a filler " on the programme with The Last Performance, Universal hokum by Fejos, with Veidt modifying his usual facial rant. The film is by two amateurs, Jo Gercon and Louis Hirshman, and is called The Story of a Nobody. It tells a story bv means of objects only, a story of two human beings, a boy and girl, and is the first American attempt at a completely objectivized film. It is amateurish, perhaps naive, and too frequentlv there is a change in the distance between the seen objects and the unseen people, so that at one time the objectivity is about to collapse from proximity to the human personalities. But I do not want to consider details here : I wish to emphasize the principle of objectivity and a realization of it w^hich is entirely in keeping with the American literal-mind: there is nothing nebulous here as in the WatsonWebber Usher film. I wish also to indicate the first American film (if we except Bruguiere's unfinished 111