Start Over

Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000473 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 #:
000473
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 Answers would vary considerably, but we hope that some would assign first place to the exhibition of all Stroheim's best work as Director, except the Merry Widow, re-issued and shown generally, and The Wedding March, generally released. Others will remember The Love of Jeanne Ney, and The Student of Prague and Finis Terrae, Cinderella, and The Waltz Dream. And others will not be able to remember anything but the hard fact that London's only specialised cinema has thrown in its lot with the bootleggers and cabarets, that The Mystery of the Chateau du De will give way before the practical, common sense, but somewhat nasal utterances of yet another worn-out stage actress. Was He Who Gets Slapped another effort at humour? The salle specialisee which becomes a talkie house. The scientist who becomes a clown. It appears he was, too, too funny, since everybody shook with laughter, except those who saw the film, who, of course, were thinking what a wonderful circus talkie could be made with Lon Chaney as the clown and Vesti le Giubba as the theme song, the late Caruso's voice serving as double — SEE Lon Chaney and HEAR Caruso. Even Masks of the Devil was better, despite a chorus of sneers from the newspaper critics. Hope at the moment seems to rest entirely with the Film Society and the London Workers' Film Society (treating the latter as representative of the Workers' Film movement). You get the extraordinary position that while everywhere the talking film has swept all before it, the two bodies who are concerned primarily with the cultural and not the commercial value of the film show silent film after silent film, a signifi 329