Close Up (Mar-Dec 1932)

Page scan 0009 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1932
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
0009
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 Vol. IX No. I March, 1932 A MINING FILM BY ERNO AIETZNER. The plot of Kanieradschaft, a Nero-film directed by G. W. Pabst, concerns a serious accident in a coal-mine, and naturally a considerable part of the film is played underground. In the following article, the architect, E. Metzner, who designed and built the sets, tells of the extraordinary problems that had to be solved here. Opposite is an original sketch by Erno Metzner for the mine wrecked by explosion. — The Editor. Having thoroughly studied mines of the Ruhr-district and the coaldistricts in the North of France, the director has decided to have the subterranean scenes necessary to the film, erected in the studio. First necessity : Picture and sound must be absolutely true to nature. Empty or laden lorries are to roll in the studio, booming, rumbling along the tubes — yet the sound must not be reflected. The creaking of the wheels on the rails has to be choked. There is no echo in a mine. Light and sound stay close to their source in the silent darkness. The noise of rolling coal-piles, shaking troughs and blasting shots, dies away without echo. But the studio has wood-flooring. The buildings are partlv constructed on high wood-scaffolds, strongly resounding. They shiver and roar under the charge of the lorries, which with a weight of four hundredweight each, are joined to trains and dragged by an engine weighing nine tons; they hold the sound for a long time : and the events themselves are noisy. Tons of stones, when the drifts fall in, have to produce in the studio the force of the catastrophy of nature. How to suppress the undesired resonance becomes the most urgent problem. The effect wanted is obtained by placing old rubber tires, cut up, under the sleepers of the rails, thus making them soundproof for a length of 300 yards. The essential quietness of all the rolling, falling and stampmg is perfected to a high degree by covering the whole floor of the tunnels with wet packed mud. The sound, of course, is hollow in the low, long construction, (shut on the top), and made of plaster of Paris, mostly, as in the original mine, strengthened by round timbers, corresponding to those in actual use. The impression of reality and genuineness of the d6cor and its occupants is augmented by heaping up buckets of coal-dust, 3