Close Up (Mar-Dec 1931)

Page scan 000340 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 #:
000340
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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322 CLOSE UP Besides the analogy with painting we also meet comparisons with music such as: " optical music," " counterpoint-composition," as maintained by Balazs, or " overtones of montage " mentioned by Eisenstein. Furthermore we meet discussions of problems of motion and rhythmisation on the ground of music* and in connection with same, are referred chiefly to Bergson and to his analysis of rhythm, motion, melody, etc. It seems that we have to do here with the method of " critical parallelism " (proof by analogy). If such a method gives momentary advantages, in further consequence it leads us to cross roads. The Soviet Film. Between the sphere of standard film production of the big capitalistic industry, meant — for the sake of profit — for the broadest masses, i.e., for the ideology of the petty bourgeosie, and the restrained sphere of the vanguard film, uniting beside the common snobs, elements truly devoted to art, (interested, however, exclusively in formal problems of the kino, neglecting its utilitarian and social role,) there exists a sphere of individual and creative film art with social tendencies, having its distinct and resolute ideologic and artistic physiognomy — the Soviet film. In the film preliminary its place is eminent inasmuch as it attained its own style and manifests a large scope of creative possibilities. " As to my opinion, the film art is for Russia the most important of all arts," declared Lenin. The Soviet film predestined by Lenin to plav a leading part, fulfils this entirely, as proved by the Soviet output up to the present. Actually it is the object of the Soviet film to take an active part in the " piatiletka " (five years plan), thus the producers endeavour to embody in the film a certain idea, to draw the spectator into the orbit of actual problems of the economical campaign and to encourage the masses to further efforts in this direction by accentuating in the film fragments of economical reconstruction. In the Soviet film a tendency is now prevailing to pass from propaganda to economical and cultural problems. The tone film. A review of the foregoing development of film art shows how the film, from imitation of the theatre, has passed to the complete painting abstraction, and how the film got rid of theatrality and unsubjectiveness propagated by modern painting and started to look for its own line of development. At that moment there appears the tone-film which has cut this evolutionary line, and at present the film under the new sonorous aspect, starts to pursue this road anew. The worst of it is that the film repeats the old kitsches of the mute film, reproducing the theatrical botch, commencing * The incorrectness of these analogies of the film with music is pointed out, among others, by Arthur Honegger, in his study Du cinema sonore a la musique rielle (From the tone film to real music), where in consequence of his considerations, he distinctly states that " film montage is based on a principle entirely different from that of a musical composition."