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 #:
000130
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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118 CLOSE UP " The First Right of Children " (Fiom the Diary of a Woman-doctor) , a Deutsches. Lichtspiel-Syndikat Film. Le premier droit de 1' enfant " (tire d:i Journal d'une doctoresse) un film Deut sches-Licht spielSyndikat . In our version, Clyde, in the death-ceil, confesses to his mother that he did not kill Roberta, but that he wanted to do so. The mother, who clings to the ultra-Christian belief that a sin in thought is equivalent to a sin in deed, is deeplv shocked. And, by reason of a sublimity quite the opposite to that of the mother in Gorkv's stoiw, this mother too becomes her son's betraver. When she goes to the Governor to petition for the revocation of her son's sentence, she is embarrassed by the point-blank question : " Do you yourself believe in your son's innocence?" At this moment, which is to decide the fate of her son, the mother is silent. The Christian sophism as to the equality of action in thought and action in deed which is an absurd parody of dialectical principles, leads to the final tragic denouement. The petition is rejected and discredits alike the dogma and the dogmatism of its bearer. And this moment cannot be washed awav by the mother's tears at her last leavetaking with the son whom she has, with her own hands, delivered over into the jaws of the Christian Baal. And the more poignant the sadness of the last scenes the more forcible is their exposure of this Mumbo Jumbo ideology.