Close Up (Mar-Dec 1932)

Page scan 000248 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 #:
000248
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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230 CLOSE UP At the first " take " an arc spits, moans, then steadies to a rising cacophony. Hush, says a companion, Chaliapin sings ! Back goes the camera for a retake. One of the watching monks faints. He is borne off. He recovers. Lights are dimmed. There is a pause while cognac is brought. Again. Soycs le bienvenu! Again. One of the revolving drums begins to squeak. So it goes on. Take and retake. And the night grows colder and colder. Pabst, the indefatigable, works with all his force. His task is incredible. We who watch and have watched before, are silent, recognising his magic, and the power that serves him. We are aware of the strain, the almost impossible difficulties in his way, the numbing opposition of sheer accident. But he is there with his counter-spell of strength, and one cannot help but feel that here is something of the dauntless qualitv of chivalry itself — no tilting at windmills, but deep-rooted in original source of inspirational courage. It is late, or early. A nameless hour. And the work goes on. The gods above have sagged a little more, look more abandoned, desolate and forgotten. Oddly, none of them falls or has been known to do so. I do not see the yo-yo any more. The dionysic figure of the fat man worried by a button is reduced to the state of the sacking he lies on. His button worries him no more. Gleaming, it proclaims the folly of human endeavour — or maybe, since it comes from Olympus, something more important and intransitive — Becoming is but the present participle of Having Been. Nothing changes. Change is a Becoming w'h'ich is just the same as Having Been. Far away in a deserted place sits Sydnev Fox, knitting. One wonders why. Svdnev Fox, they tell me, wants to get back to Hollywood. Mavbe she is dreaming of Hollvwood as she sits alone in state and knits whatever it is she is knitting. And, I remember, not without a pang, I had in my innocence and forgetfulness of mind asked " Does she play the English Rosinante?" You will see that I meant Dulcinea.* And as I glimpse her now she too seems of another world. And I too, with my frozen feet, I take a look at the moon and begin to Avonder what world I am of. I feel it is time to go home. I leave them all — the burning books, the patient oxen, the dead men on the roof, the sttidio hands in their bodices and tippifs. Miss Fox with her knitting, the yawning extras, one and all, and feel my attention closing quietly but firmly round the vision of a snack bar and a choucroute garnie. Kenneth Macpherson. She plays, of course, Maria, Don Q.'s fair niece.