Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Page scan 000163 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 #:
000163
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 UP 151 commercial point of view, it can be seen that all factitious events not of the news-reel genus could be formed just as well from drawings as from elaborately constructed events with solid objects. Better, in fact, for any and every type of visual event can be formed from drawings, whilst only a limited amount of constructive manipulation is possible with the camera. The way in which " real photographs " are identified with the original event is rather surprising, considering the symbolic nature of the photographic image. The reproduced event has an exact one-to-one correspondence with the shape, motion, and direction of the event, as seen from one particular view point. Apart from this the image will occupy an area about one fiftieth of that covered bv the eyes, even when they are fixed. The contrast of the image depends on the projector, the illumination of the room, and the albedo of the screen, but it is rarely more than sixty to one as opposed to the some thousands to one existing in nature. Furthermore the action is limited in time as well as by the screen opening. In short, " real " material is inevitably manipulated by the very process of obtaining it. The Kino-Eye theory can never be completely realized in practice. In spite of the remoteness of the connection between events and their photographic counterparts, it is safe to assume that no audience would flock to see a film of Marlene Dietrich made from drawings of that lady, however accurate the drawings might be. Large scale events of known •expense and danger carry far more weight on the screen, if photographic, than similar scenes in, Silly Symphonies, although in every visual respect they are the same. This completes the survey of film material and its fundamental properties. To summarize, visual film material must possess duration, spatial extension, and direction in time; it must therefore be an event. Acoustic events have a similar formal structure. Provided these conditions are satisfied by the material there is no a priori objection to its use in the film. Thus there is a vast field of material as yet unexplored. Two types of material of great practical importance, but as yet untried, are non-verbal tvpography, and non-perspective representation. Also, the combination of the visual qualities of different experiences, as in the well-known posters in which a handkerchief is simultaneously a man playing football and a handkerchief. By the nature of things the material possesses visual intellectual, and ■emotional content not touched by this analysis, but any relations constructed between these qualities must necessarily be fastened to a scaffolding of the formal qualities we have discussed. The problem of analysing, classifying, and creating the hierarchy of relation structures (" metrics ") that result from the ordering of film material is the second problem of film theory, and film practice. Robert A. Fairthorne. November, 1932.