Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Page scan 000161 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 #:
000161
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 L P 149 direction from the man's photograph, through the childish drawing of the essentials of his appearance, to the abstract pattern rhythm. Or rather, through the visual events that parallel these pictorial analogies. Ruttman, in the original silent version of Berlin, opened the film with the visual essence of the action of the linkages on a locomotive, the pictorial version following. For some unknown reason the animated cartoons have passed over this variation for the more usual technique, which tends more to the intellectual end of the scale if ever it departs from the representational (e.g. the use of punctuation marks bv the late Felix the Cat and sometimes by Krazy Kat). Roughly, film material embraces the complete range from visual events with diffused intellectual and sharp visual significance, to events with sharp intellectual and diffused visual significance. The ultimate significance in the film depends on the context and treatment. Alhough all the material is in a sense symbolic,* the range may be tabulated thus : — JTisual Significance . Abstract Svmbolic (Visual Analogv) Representational Svmbolic (Intellectual Analogv) Typographic (Xon-verbal) Typographic (Verbal) Intellectual Significance . The proper classification of any particular piece of film material depends on the mentality of the audience for whom it is intended. To an English audience a shot of Chinese lettering would be either purelv decorative, when it would be placed in the abstract group, or representational, i.e. it would be a shot of Chinese lettering as such. To a Chinese the material would have a meaning over and above its appearance. Similar considerations apply to the acoustic material. The sounds of speech can be used to give the general impression of speech, or to give the meaning of the words spoken. An example of the first use was given in City Lights, where a formal speech was represented bv a suitablv inflected series of distorted speech sounds, while the visual equivalent is the use of imitation print on books and newspapers in drawings. It is used much better, even if accidentally, in the case of a foreign film employing an unfamiliar language. Abstract sound includes music as a special case, but has a far wider range. In general the acoustic event is more plastic than the visual, for it can be made to take on any kind of emotional or intellectual significance bv constructing relations between it and the rest of the film events. * " The human mind is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions, and usages respecting other components of its experience." A. X. Whitehead. " Symbolism." p. 9.