Close Up (Mar-Dec 1932)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1932
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000199
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:
February 22, 2024
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CLOSE UP The film producer is no Maecenas and still less does he want to become the martyr of any conviction. He is a merchant with a strong sense of the present and a slight irritation about the future, rather more anxious than usual this year ; which subject is to be chosen, which actor and which tone ? Eighty per cent of the German films for the coming season have been announced. They number 112. A trade paper has listed them according to their subjects : 20 historical or patriotic pictures, 7 military comedies, 23 other cheerful subjects, 30 adventure, criminal or sport films, 9 with insistence on landscape, 11 chiefly musical pictures, 7 literary and problem films. The announced titles give more detailed characterisations of the different ranges they cover. For example, where landscape is predominant, Green is the Heath, The Piiszta is Shining, Adventure in the Engadine. Or musical films : The Flower of Hawaii, When the Violins Sound, Johann Strauss, Imperial Royal Court Conductor. In literary and problem films we have Morals and Love, Daughters of Good Families, Weird Affairs. Almost twenty per cent of the German films are produced by the Ufa. This time it announces 23 principal films. Not all films announced, however, are actually turned. In many studios the chief actor — the money — fails to appear. The Ufa, however, has a cash capital of millions. The returns on foreign sales were 45% higher than last year, visitors to the Ufa cinemas numbered i \ millions