Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Page scan 00071 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1933
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00071
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 VP 63 The drawbacks are attributable to many causes, but firstly and dominantly, to the financial condition of Japanese cinema which is forever destined, on account of the national peculiarity, not to fit foreign markets, and is, therefore, prevented from spending as much money on film production as in occidental countries. Making a talkie needs more money than making a silent film and projecting a talkie needs new equipment. Moreover, business depression is felt very acutely in the film trade. These aspects prevent a film producing company from making a talkie and a film exhibitor from buying a sound film apparatus. The second cause is that few directors understand a talking picture as the more profound form of film art, if they know a little of counterpoint, parallelism and such like; although thev may know all about sound technics, thev don't understand a talking picture as a new, greater totalitv. A director ventured to make a talking Japanese adaptation of Sunrise, the famous silent film by the late F. W. Murnau, only to testify to the truth that sound is unnecessary and surplus for the expression of the material content of Sunrise. Another director made a musical film which expressed nothing more than its theme songs alone expressed, a talking film which is qualified to amuse blind spectators. Very soon after Rene Clair's Sous les Toils de Paris was shown, we were much surprised to see in the opening scene of almost every Japanese talkie a camera which tracked forward from a higher to a lower level and in its ending scene tracked converselv, both scenes accompanied by the theme song. " Rain of Coins," directed by Sadao Yamanaka. " Phtie de sous," realise par Sadao Yamanaka. " Munzenregen." Regie : Sadao Yamanaka.