Close Up (Jan-Jun 1930)

Page scan 000607 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 #:
000607
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP FOR ADOLESCENTS ONLY. A brilliant idea — Pandora's Box with the lid off ! Yes, in England. You would have thought the censor would have kept the lid firmly on Pandora's box. But he went one better. He took the lid off, let everything out and then showed us the film to let us see there was nothing in it. Result, everyone thinks it a duller film than the scenario made it and the trade papers were unable to recommend it. The English subtitle announces that " Lulu's response to * primitive instincts ' gave her * a peculiar fascination for men.' " But in the film as made, because made in the round, it was seen that she had a peculiar fascination for women, too— or at least for one woman. So in the English version the Lesbian part, so marvellously pla3^ed by Alice Roberts, is cut out. We musn't know about them. As Edgar Wallace observes, the public that goes to cinemas is not on the same level as those that go to plays, and so they have to be treated differently. The Lesbian goes. This piece of cutting was very ingenious, because she keeps on occurring and is rather important. Her absence in the English version ruined the scenes on the ship where Lulu hid, robbing them of at least half their completeness, power and poignancy. The wedding scene suffered in the same way. It was also not made clear in the English, what the two men were doing in Lulu's bedroom; the simple sub-title, Let's strew roses on the bridal bed " was just omitted, although the scene was there. So no one know why it was there. The remark Lulu makes in her hysterics in the theatre, Smoking not permitted," was changed for no reason at all into the cheaply 423