Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1933
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00050
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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:
November 07, 2023
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42 CLOSE UP learn how to use them. (See Trouble in Paradise, one agrees that he seems to know every trick.) Here, in this statement, a hint that he sees all the paraphernalia of the studio, screen and laboratory and cutting-room as writers see words, to be combined, to be juxtaposed, to be put into order, to make of that order something none of them have separatelv, together. .For the rest, what does one get ? The idea back of his mind in his work? Methods? Ambitions? Naturally not. Who is going to give anything away? I said, a sly guy. An emigrant effect. Small, witty, and not outwardly winning. Clearly, he will plav in his work with the splendour and space he did not have at the start and which even now are not quite real to him. Shut doors .... how marvellous to open them ! Staircases . . . how wonderful to> be able to come down and not feel ridiculous ! Back of all, fear — wrapped up in size. Defence motive. And then at the last, the statement that the " Lubitsch touch " (I know, but it was inevitable) is worked out on paper. Only very rarely is there improvisation. I get the same from Harold Lloyd. He too is in his bath. I met his secretary, who is not much further advanced than himself. Reason — they only arrived from France last night. Suitcases, labels, piled clothes litter the Dorchester decor. The phone goes. Some paper has said Mr. Lloyd will appear at some cinema with Jack Pavne. That is a good one. Mr. Lloyd will appear at no cinema and does not know who' Jack Payne is. That also is a good one. For Jack Payne. The clock goes on. The secretary, who' might also be his bodyguard, talks. The Dorchester's smallest page-boy comes in with the world's largest typewriter. It is announced that Mr. Llovd will soon be readv. We light our second cigarette. The secretary is by this time tying his tie. Did I say he was dressing? Lloyd comes in, in a pale blue tailored dressing gown, shoots to a dressing-stool, apologises with a brief recital of night-life, and asks what sort of story we would like. I tell him, and out of it comes, first, the fact that he too does not improvise. (I am sure these facts will be greeted with wild excitement by amateur film societies). Welcome Danger was begun in the middle, worked back to the start, and then, then the end was devised. That cannot be done with talkies. All gags are worked out on paper now. " If you improvise in talkies, vou'd have1 to start improvising vour audience." Shooting does not take long. It is the story that takes the time — finding it and preparing it. By that time, news has got round and other studios are making similar stories. There were two stories bought before Movie Crazy was hit on. It appears that Llovd hankered after the storv eventuallv made by Keaton as Speakeasily . It was not a Keaton part, and Keaton knew it. It was a Lloyd part, but Metro had it, and would not let Lloyd buy it. Instead, they offered him the part. Being tied up with Paramount, he ^ould not accept. So Speakeasily was made, unrecognisable from the