Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Page scan 000193 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 #:
000193
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 J81 for a single booking at the Mayfair in New York. It was unfavourably received and did not do well. Nor have the Soviet films been faring particularly well of late. Shame, the new sound film with music bv Shostakovich, came and went its quiet waj' without stirring much attention one way or the other. All Soviet films of any pretentions are heralded as being " as good as The Road to Life," for the simple reason that this latter was so pronounced a box office success. Victor Trivas' disturbing film, No Man's Land, is also here, having been previewed recently by the august body of the National Board of Review under the title of Hell on Earth . Stokowski, the celebrated conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, selected the Soviet film, Odna, (Alone), by Kozintsoff and Trauberg, to illustrate a programme of films and music given by the League of Composers. With all this renewed activity in things foreign, the first sign of real life in manv many months, it is seen that a slow but sure bovcott has already begun its insidious work on foreign films in general (on account of the stringent " Buv American " campaign now current) and on German films in particular, on account of the chaotic political condition in German v. As this is written, word comes that manv bookings of German films, even on Maedchen in Uniform, have been cancelled by exhibitors who1 fear antagonism from their patrons with anti-Hitler feelings. Business on German films began to drop when the situation became acute and it is most probablv that those major companies dickering for German productions will now hold off until the " Hitler scare " blows over. The foreign movie situation in America has reached a cross-roads. It either gets a release through national channels with a guaranteed income making it possible for the European producers to turn out product to suit the American temperament, or it sinks back into the slough of a pseudo-art movement at the hands of a few money-grabbing entrepeneurs who cannot in any way make it possible for the producers abroad to want to make films for America. Herman G. Weinberg. Baltimore, Md. April 1st.