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 #:
000190
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

178 CLOSE UP In New York, a few Hungarian and Polish talkies were favourably received by both press and public. Sporadic showings of talking pictures in the Jugo-Slavic and allied Czech languages were also shown. Not very many Soviet films came here since The Road to Life blazed the path for the Soviet sound films in this country so auspiciously. Men and Jobs (it was probably "called something else on the Continent), the first film of A. Macharet, was very favourably received in New York, particularly because it was leavened with merriment, an unusual quality for a film of this tvpe to have. What Eisenstein did for the tractor in Old and New, Macharet does for the steam crane in Men and Jobs — and the result is eminently satisfactory. Of course, everyone awaited Dovzhenko's first sound film which was reputed to be in New York for some time, but no one knew what could be done for it. Until the Cameo Theatre, one of the principal outlets for the better Soviet films in New York, announced a single showing of Ivan, with the newspaper advertisement running the line: " Too aesthetic for public showing?" It remains to be seen how Ivan will be received and whether it can ever become a popular film here. (Soil — or Earth, as it was also known, was a distinctive " flop," in the movie parlance — even the critics not having been able to see anything in it. It died a quick death in New York and its subsequent bookings have been negligible, if an}'.) It will probably come as a surprise to learn that Potemkin has been synchronized, but not with Edmund Meisel's magnificent score, but with some 10-20-30 " movie music," and a prologue and epilogue in English setting forth the backgrounds of the story, winding up with a tacked-on sequence displaying the re-building of the Soviet State, now that the Czar is no more, etc. All verv anti-climatic and depressing, though it will be verv interesting to see what appeal Potemkin still has with the American masses, even in its dressed-up version. I saw it again the other night — after a lapse of 5 or (i years, and that poor sacred-cow among film classics shows signs of haying aged considerably, though there remain flashes wherein Eisenstein, Alexandrov and Tisse were " right " and the effect is as crushing on the spectator as it was then. Die Hauptmann von Koepenick had its American premiere at the tiny Europa in New York, drawing high praise from the critics, but even that cannot save a good picture at the box-office, which is still the deciding factor in the presentation of such things in America. This him will have an indifferent success at best, though five or six vears ago it would have called for untold comment and crowds. Thus the movie scene changes and a fickle public soon tires. . . Nor is repertory any solution. Going back into the files to revive films which had formerly done well has met with disastrous results in most cases. Maedchen in Uniform continues to be the only German him that has scored a pronounced and unquestioned success in America.' Even the * Excepting, of course, the phenomenal case of " Zwei Herzen im .'3/4 Takt."