Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000204 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 #:
000204
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 The professionals have discovered that speech-films lead to the abyss, to a bastard form of expression, to a total overthrow of all artistic principles. But let me tell you that the film is hardier than these scared folk who see no further than the ends of their noses, that it is much too young to be held up bv fond fears and useless lamentations. What foundation is there for the laws these good people would establish ? Natural experience or hybrid deduction ? They have discovered that the film must remain silent. Because, for example, Chaplin has said that it has no more need of words than has a Beethoven svmphony. But, since when is the film a symphonv? Certainlv not since ^Madame Germaine Dulac has produced what she chooses to describe as " visual symphonies A hundred years hence it may be possible to establish the laws of cinematography. Up to the present there are only conventions, based upon work accomplished to date. But supposing to-morrow a genius should arrive and reverse all these conventions? And is it not possible to imagine that the arrival of the speech-film has performed exactly this service ? Let us not forget that the silent film is actually stifled by its own perfection. Carl Dryer's Joan of Arc, Sternberg's Docks of New York prove this indubitably. What remains to be done ? Repeat the technical triumphs, the wonderful lighting, the overwhelming setting, with actors as denuded of staginess as were those who took part in it? No. We have demonstrably reached the culmination of one form of cinematic expression and if the speech-film had not been invented, producers the world over would have been looking 136