Close Up (Jul-Dec 1930)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1930
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000487
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:
August 29, 2022
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 being taken over by a Western civilization . . . tliere is nothing funny about that. There isn't. It is all very unfortunate. Bur there is, it seems, a great deal that is funny about Indian temples. . . And they call it Kiss Me Sergeant, and what I cannot understand is not even the film being shown, but being MADE. And as to Storm over Asia, and the behaviour of the wearers of the alleged British uniform, it W'ill be interesting to compare HelVs Angels, in w^hich (unless the scenes are cut out) the behaviour of the English officers is very surprising (or perhaps not). But that will be passed, and Mr. Hughes is a millionaire. Whilst on the subject of censorship (it is so boring, that one doesn't want to bring it up again) let me describe a plot of a new American film. A woman having got into difficulties with three suitors, goes to the house of a fourth man; he is permanently half-drunk, and makes her completely so. She collapses, and he carries her to his bed, locks the door and sits outside all night. She wakes up, and, rather gratuitously, decides that something must have happened. So she says he will obvious] V have to marry her. To make everything quite clear, it is only on their way to be married that he explains that he was outside all night, whereupon she exclaims that, then, there is no need for him to marry her, is there? . . . well, that's all right. But why is that passed and so much else isn't? Perhaps because it is Gloria Swanson in What A Wido\i\ and the censor thinks he is giving us sexmaniacs a sop. Robert Herring. 309