Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000177 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 #:
000177
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 which is a point. Ahhough, also, we heard a cart rumbh'ng into the distance, and heard horses galloping round a bend, we had to cut pretty quickly ; the mike in those days didn't move .... I think I am right in saying. These two outdoor films came pretty soon after each other. Then there were crook films, William Powell films, play films, and then the first musical, Broadway Melody. Shall I ever forget it? Ever forget Anita Page, and Bessie Love's sob out of a blank screen ? Let's try, and hurry on to Movietone Follies, which I dealt with all by itself some months back, and need not do again, save point out that sound and visual imagery were blended for the first time and that the camera was allowed to move around and make its own patterns while the sound, in this case of a song being sung, was quite straight. This came first, you see; it did not occur to people to do anything with sound but use it straight. Until Blackmail, I do hope I am right in these suppositions. But Blackmail used sound with bits of imagination. The famous instances are now famous enough, but let me record how well the sound began, after a man had been caught by the Flying Squad, the detectives breaking into speech for the first time as they left the job. They didn't talk about that, they didn't at once proceed to unfold the drama as dictated by a script. They talked about their tailors as they washed their hands. And how well silence was used, too, that was an advance. It also got us a little away from the dreariness of everything having to be realistic. Smaller directors would not have risked silence in parts of a talkie, because they would have worried about the fact that traffic noises don't suddenly stop, that people don't 117