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 #:
000180
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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108 CLOSE UP Pommer, whose stamp had previously marked a dozen German screen masterpieces.* The fact also, that Paramount took this film under its wing and lavished all its tricks of exploitation upon it, gave The Blue Angel an advantage which equally meritorious German language films exhibited in America since then were denied. (Among the notable German language films that did not "' take " at the American box-office, were Die Drei von der Tankstelle, Liebeswalzer, Die Dreigroschenoper, The Congress Dances, and Die Floetenkonzert von Sans Souci.) Though the version of The Blue Angel shown in America was an English one, the recording was so uneven in quality, parts of it being downright incomprehensible, that what with a little German thrown in here and there for atmosphere, we do not have to discount very much the presence of its English dialogue as responsible in a great degree for its success. The comparative success of The Blue Angel was in part instrumental in Ufa's establishing an outlet for its own product in America. It was intended that the Cosmopolitan Theatre in New York be the show-window of the more spectacular of the Ufa product, especially those made with an eye towards the American market, besides a means of securing whatever revenue they could from a mass of various kinds of short films (educational, musical, scientific, etc.) which was being produced in an unending quantity at the Neubabelsberg studios near Berlin. But the German population of New York could not be lured by the temptation of seeing their own home-grown product in sufficient numbers to warrant continuing the project, and the closing down of the Cosmopolitan Theatre marked the end of Ufa's theatrical activities in America. j Soon after Ufa dissolved its New York exchange and turned over its product for release in America to Leo Brecher, at present operating The Little Carnegie Playhouse in New York, which has been one of the major show-windows for German and French product in New York. Tobis, the one other great sound producing company in Germany, fared little better. Their attempt to operate the Yanderbilt Theatre in New York as a first-run house in America for its major product, failed dismally, with possibly two box-office successes out of their entire season — Karamaaov and Die Grosse Sehnsucht . However, from the above resume, it might be deduced that the German language film has not proved an entire success in America. Perhaps the reason for mentioning the conspicuous failures of certain notable pictures, and producing companies, first, is that in these failures lies a more general summing up of the condition of the foreign language film in the United States, than in the sporadic successes (aside from the previously mentioned * Caligari, The Nibelungen, Variety, The Last Laugh, Homecoming, Faust, Metropolis, etc. t Ufa's little theatre in Newark had already decided to call it quits, while their Cincinnati theatre, having contracted for a Ufa franchise, continued to operate, though without any official connections with that film company.