Close Up (Mar-Dec 1931)

Page scan 00014 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1931
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00014
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.

8 CLOSE UP (Note here 1 : This means that dynamism of changeable proportion of the projected picture is accomplished by masking a part of the shape of the film square — the frame. And Note here 2 : This has nothing to do with the suggestion that the proportions 1 :2 (3 :6) give a " vertical possibility " in masking the right and the left to such an extent that the remaining area has the form of an upright standing strip. The vertical spirit can never thus be attained : 1st : because the occupied space comparative to the horizontal masked space will never be interpreted as something axally opposed to it, but always as a part of the latter, and 2nd : for, never surpassing the height that is bound to the horizontal dominant, it will never impress as an opposite space axis — the one of uprightness. That is why my suggestion of squareness puts the question in a quite new field notwithstanding the fact that vari-typed masking has been used even in the dull proportions of the present standard film size, and even by myself. — First shot of Odessa-stair in Potemkin.) No matter what the theoretic premises, only the square will provide us the real opportunity at last to give decent shots of so many things banished from the screen until to-day. Glimpses through winding mediaeval streets or huge Gothic cathedrals overwhelming them. Or these replaced by minarets if the town portrayed should happen to be oriental. Decent shots of totem poles. The Paramount building in New York, Primo Camera, or the profound and abysmal canyons of Wall Street in all their expressiveness — shots available to the cheapest magazine — yet exiled for thirty years from the screen. So far for my form. And I believe profoundly in the Tightness of my statement because of the synthetic approach upon which its conclusions are based. Further, the warm reception of my statement encourages me to a certainty in the theoretic soundness of my argument. But the lying form of the screen (so appropriate to its lying spirit !) has a host of refined and sophisticated defenders. There exists even a special and peculiar literature on these questions and we should leave our case incomplete did we not pass in critical review the arguments therein contained for the form it prefers. Rio Papagayo, Guerrero, Mexico. THE DINAMIC SQUARE. II The memorandum distributed to us before this meeting (attached to this discourse as appendix) and brilliantly compiled by Mr. Lester Cowan (assistant secretary of the Academy) provides a brief and objective survey of all that has been written regarding the proportions of the screen and in some of these writings share a preference for the horizontal frame.