Close Up (Mar-Dec 1931)

Page scan 000251 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 #:
000251
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 237 war and the present economic crisis, must remain unstated. The cause in the studios of course, is always lack of mother-love. Consider for instance, how Hollywood would have made Potemkin. The story by this time, must be familiar to all. Sailors on a Russian battleship refuse to eat meat covered with maggots. The doctor pronounces the food edible, men are to be shot for their complaint, in the ensuing mutiny their leader is killed. The townspeople, curious, indifferent and sympathetic, are shot down by Cossacks; the battleship sailing as it believes to death, sees instead the red flag appear on the masts of opposing ships. What would America have made of such a story ? Maggots certainly would not have been permitted. Instead we should have opened with a sailor's bar, with plentv of females in sex-appeal promoting dresses, and a cheerful song. The doctor need be little changed, but he would have had sinister designs upon the heroine who would of course, have survived the perils of the underworld because of her love for an old father-mother-grandparent or young brother-sister-orphan-child at choice, helped by the patent-enamel body paint into which American stars are dipped. " / t'ink I go 'ome ! "