Close Up (Mar-Dec 1932)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP more. Herrn Hugenberg's organisers have made the Ufa a sober enterprise conveying its articles directly and immediately to the consumer, one which in estimating the political atmosphere also calculates more reservedly than the small, frightened producers. Only one of Ufa's 23 films is listed as a " national super picture." Among the others 9 are adventure, criminal and sport films, 8 musical comedies, and 3 are characterized as " films of current problems," for example Alarm on Track B. Titles nowadays have little to do as a rule with the subject matter that they are supposed to cover. Nothing else, however, to be anticipated of the coming productions conveys any impression of encouragement. Let us look at the casts. Ufa chooses its collaborators consistently from above the average. Distinguished people who had dreams years ago, but who have collected too much professional knowledge since to be ambitious. Balanced and smoothed scenarios are at their disposal, a first rate production apparatus and actors with routine and a ready coined profile. If a new man gets among them by any chance who might have plans of his own, he is so cautiously embedded in their oiled mechanism that nothing can happen. The Ufa wishes neither to surprise nor be surprised. It is true — it's chief of production said recently : " We have the opportunity to create films, whether amusing or serious does not matter, which do not deal simply with entertainment, but in which questions are asked which we have to answer. In future we want to see in films men who pursue a distinct aim, who, because of their character, fight against their surroundings, who strive mentally towards a worthy objective, and attain it neither by chance or the use of unfair means." Do problems of this kind really worry Mr. E. H. Correll very much ? The interests of film people have shifted enormously ; from the subject to what really matters, money. Some years ago their talks still resembled the discussions of other young artists. There were struggles about ideas, methods, and solutions. Authors were absorbed in atmospheres. Directors would hunt for motifs for weeks. Architects clung to styles, camera men dreamt of new objectives. To-day the director's conferences resemble the discussion of a savings association. Authors have to find scenes to fit sets another firm has left in the studio. Directors alter complexes desperately in order to have to pay the star a four days' salary only. Architects are appreciated according to how little material and time they use up, and the cameraman as to how many camera angles he can manage per day. Nobody has time for experiments, or only if they help economy. The preponderance of economic considerations also changes the character of the young artists' collective societies. Their hunger to create is overshadowed by the lack of capital. In former and quieter times they could point out new ways to film art. Meantime the Kollectiv has become a cheap expedient for penniless enterprisers. But in spite of that, these endeavours remain important, for in them a future form of film organisation is developing while the present one is almost suffocated under the pressure of finance and bureaucracy. The collectives save what enthusiasm remains for film as an art. The remaining possibility, which would be to stimulate the production of short subjects, is still unexploited. Ufa it is true has announced 12 two reel films, but proceeds historically and moves the level of these first German short pictures