Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000176 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 #:
000176
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 got used to swooping about, until we think that is cinema, but it was really a pis aller. Refer to the Russians' statement, which no one has read enough. But in In Old Arizona there was more. The hero was a 'Cisco Kid who was " wanted " in the town. A gay, swaggering, clinking fellow. It amused him to visit the sheriff, who was the barber, and have a bath. He had it, W'hile the sheriff outside talked of his plans for capturing the 'Cisco Kid. We saw the Kid feeling the water, and pouring oils in, cutting to the sheriff in the old-cinema way. But while the sheriff talked, we didn't cut back. We should have, in silent days, it was the only way to get the suspense, the parallel action. Here is a man who is wanted, and here, in the next room, is the man who wants him. But with sound, we could hear the bath water pouring in, while we saw the man, the sheriff, talking. This w^as much better. It gave us one visual thing, and added to it by sound. The main thing was the sheriff talking, and it was built up and added to by hearing the water running in. There in the next room was the 'Cisco Kid himself, and we knew^ it. We could hear him. We could hear him because the walls were thin. That added to the suspense. Not only w^ere we in possession of the fact that hunter and hunted were in adjoining rooms, and that we could hear the hunted through the walls, but we knew, by this, that the walls were thin, that there was almost nothing between the two, that the 'Cisco Kid was very daring to be there. I think I may record that this w^as one of the first films in which there were several languages, Spanish and Chinese, and they got their effect as dramatic noise, not as dialogue, 116