Close Up (Mar-Dec 1931)

Page scan 00015 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 #:
00015
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 Let us examine the arguments that have brought different authors from different sides and specialities, to the same, unanimously acclaimed . . . wrong suggestion. The principle arguments are four : Two from the dominion of aesthetics. One physiological. And one commercial. Let us demolish them in the order quoted. The two aesthetic arguments in favour of the horizontal shape of the screen are based on deductions deriving from traditions in the art forms of painting and stage practice. As such they should be eliminated from discussion even without being taken into consideration for the greatest errors invariably arise from the attempt to transplant practical results based upon the resemblance of the superficial appearances of one branch of art to those of another. (An entirely different practice is the discovery of similarity in methods and principles of different arts corresponding to the psychological phenomena identical and basic for all art perceptions — but the present superficially exposed analogies, as we shall see, are far from this !) Indeed, from the methodological similarity of different arts it is our task to seek out the strictest differentiation in adapting and handling them accord* ing to the organic specifics typical for each. To enforce adoption of the laws organic to one art upon another is profoundlv wrong. This practice has something of adultery in it. Like sleeping in another person's wife's bed. . . But in this case the arguments in themselves bring so mistaken a suggestion from their own proper dominion that it is worth while considering them to demonstrate their falsity. 1. Lloyd A. Jones (No 9 on the list) discusses the various rectangular proportions employed in artistic composition and gives the result of a statistical study of the proportions of paintings. The results of his research seem to favour a ratio of base to altitude considerably larger than 1, and probably over 1.5. A statement startling in itself. I don't repudiate the enormous statistical luggage that was doubtless at the disposal of Mr. Jones in enabling him to make so decisive a statement. But as I set about summoning up my pictorial recollections gathered through all the museums that I have so lately visited during my rush through Europe and America, and recalling the heaps of graphic works and compositions studied during my work, it seems to me that there are exactly as many upright standing pictures as pictures disposed in horizontal line. And everyone will agree with me. The statistical paradox of Mr. Jones derives probably from an undue weight placed upon compositional proportions of the 19th century preimpressionistic period— the worst period of painting — the " narrative " type of picture. Those second and third rate paintings, right off the progressive