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 #:
00086
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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78 CLOSE UP THE LAST OF THE SILENTS. So the last of Inner-London's silent cinemas has gone. The construction of a News Reel theatre on the site of the little Gaiety Cinema in Tottenham Court Road shatters what, for hundreds of London movie fans was a sentimental link with the past. Many of us had a strange affection for this little cinema. Situated in the West End, flanked on all sides by far more expensive rivals announcing " hundred-per-cent." talkies, it steadfastly ignored the march of progress, and although the months ran into years none but silent films flickered across its battered but honoured screen. It is doubtful if the Gaiety changed much from the day it was built to the day of its death. The creaky piano, usually the sole accompaniment to the pictures, the back row of seats covered with dainty if dusty bits of lace, the film breaks at crucial moments, the sensational challenging posters out front — all this took us back to a period long before the talkies arrived. And the films ! The Gaiety was .a joy for the connoisseur, for without warning you would notice one day that some almost forgotten epic of the great German era was shewing. And black-hatted intellectuals would rub shoulders with the denizens of Tottenham Court Road's back streets, admiring the genius of Pabst and the artistry of Brigitte Helm. And then perhaps an unknown French or Italian production would send us scampering along in keen anticipation. Russian films were shewn too> — The End of St. Petersburgh ran for a fortnight. American railroad dramas with middle-West settings, thrilling exploits of Harry Peel, the German stunt king, revivals of incrediblv ancient Chaplins — you never knew what you would get next at the Gaiety. And now it has gone and a big slice of the past has gone with it. R. Bond. SPECTATORS' GROUPS IN AMERICA. The film club, begun in France after the war by men like that lamented missionary of the film-as-art, Canudo, has at last reached the shores of the United States. North America had already inaugurated a film-exhibition body in Mexico City ; the commercial offspring of the film club, "the little cinema," had been Americanized and demoralized; individuals had projected their careers in corporate guilds and the like ; but the non-ulterior film club had really never been adopted in these Yankee provinces. And then — almost simultaneously — two appear, the Film Society and the! Film Forum, the latter the larger body in anticipated membership. There is no competition between these two groups, indeed several individuals are associated with both, either officially or unofficially,