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 #:
000188
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:
November 07, 2023
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176 CLOSE UP financially successful Road to Life, that startingly human treatment of the " wild " children who infested the city streets in Russia in the years following the war. The Road to Life had its American premiere in Hollywood, instead of New York. The reason for the change in policy as offered by one critic, was prorJably due to the keen interest that the American movie industry has manifested in the question as to how Russia would come through with sound-films. The Road to Life was the first of the Soviet sound films to be shown in America. In the two years since then, there has been nothing from Russia to reach these shores to equal it. The first public review of The Road to Life at the Filmarte Theatre in Hollywood, took place before a selected audience, where it was very favourably received. The audience at the first public showing reacted to it with loud applause. Experimental Cinema, a Hollywood film publication, pointed out one of the reasons for its instantaneous success: " The theme is one that is sympathetic .to an average American audience. Children and young people have alwavs been in demand on the American screen, and here is a film that does not treat children and young boys with the honev and syrup and the repulsive sentimental dishonesty of the socalled ' children's picture ' manufactured by Hollywood. On the contrary, the honesty and authenticity of Ekk's film of the ' wild boys ' are manifest to everyone." What adverse criticisms were levelled at the film were negligible before the shower of praise which it was accorded on all sides, and the warm feeling for the Soviet Union that the chief character, Mustapha, created, bespoke eloquently of the achievement of the director, N. Ekk, in reaching another milestone in the development of the foreign language film as a medium of universal expression, understanding, and sympathy. This goes a step beyond Rene Clair, who after all only broke down technical barriers relating to the mechanics of language. The director of The Road to Life, whose achievement in winning the enthusiastic approval of even such reactionary organisations as The American Federation of Women's Clubs, through the effectiveness and honesty of his " propaganda," has brought the foreign language film to its first really important stage of development as a social force. ADDENDA (a) Since the above was written, little has changed to alter the situation for foreign films in the United States for the better. A number of new French films were exhibited, and the most notable of them, David Golder, was not a pronounced success, although it drew fairish praise from the press. Indeed, several lesser films, of more popular appeal