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 #:
000132
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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120 CLOSE UP this is merely the conclusion of an individual embodiment of that tragedy which' continues to be enacted in the United States even hour and every minute, not in fiction but in fact. It might perhaps be imagined that the formula we selected — the formula of a sociological treatise — would prove dry and didactic, but in fact it enhances the poignancv of the situation and affords a deeper insight into the types and characters of the protagonists. And further it exercises a profound influence on the purely technical methods. It was thanks to this formula, for instance, that the idea of the " internal monologue " was finally evolved in connexion with cinematography. This idea has been engaging" my mind for the last six years. That is to say, I was preoccupied with it before the advent of the sound film made possible its realization in practice. We need, as we have seen above, an extremelv clear and definite exposition of what was happening in Clyde's mind before the actual moment of the accident with the boat, and we saw clearly that this could not be done by a mere presentation of external happenings. Knitted brows, rolling eyes, spasmodic breathing, contorted frame, a stony face, convulsive movements of the hands — all this emotional apparatus was inadequate to express the subtleties of the internal conflict in all its phases. We had to photograph what was going on inside Clyde's mind. We had to demonstrate audiblv and visibly, the feverish torrent of thoughts, interspersed with external action, with the boat, with the girl sitting opposite, with his own actions. The form of the internal monologue was evolved. These montage sheets were wonderful. Even literature is almost powerless in this domain. It has to confine itself to primitive rhetoric, as in Dreiser's description of Clyde's inward broodings, or to the still more blatant mendacity of the pseudo-classic tirades of O'Neill's heroes who, having enlightened the public as to what they are saying, enlighten it in a second monologue, uttered aside, as to what they are thinking. The drama is even more impotent in this matter than orthodox literary prose. The film alone has at its command the means of presenting adequately the hurrying thoughts of an agitated man. Or, if literature can do it too, it can only be literature that transgresses its orthodox bounds. It is brilliantly achieved, as far as is feasible within the harsh framework of literary limitations, in the immortal " inward monologues " of Leopold Bloom, in James Joyce's wonderful " Ulysses."