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 #:
000199
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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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CLOSE UP 187 ways of the actors and the camera have crossed : While the camera was digging its way deep into the earth, the actors were crawling along the surface. At the end of the drive the camera reached the surface of the earth', and the actors are deep in the earth at the bottom of the crater. The most puzzling problem was perhaps another one, also set up by Mr. Pabst. The decor was a stone cave. It was shut on its four sides and also at the top, which is very rare with sets. In this enclosure water stood 1.50 metres deep. The floor of the set was made uneven, SO' that the actors who had to wade through the water could proceed only with caution, feeling their way step by step. Mr. Pabst wanted to track before the actors. That was a difficult problem. For it was impossible to put a car into the water, not only because the ground was uneven, but also because the surface of the water had been covered with coaldust, peat, etc., and in that the trace of the camera would have been visible. Nor could one suspend the camera, for the set was closed at the top. Therefore I had a beam built, which stood horizontally out into the air without support for 16 metres, and which was stuck into the narrow side of the decor through a low entrance. On one end of it besides the camera sat Mr. Pabst and Mr. Wagner the cameraman. While the scene was being taken the beam was drawn back, and the camera and director and cameraman were suspended in the air — supported by the beam which had its own support 16 metres away ! By their continual flow moving camera shots have much charm ; they are pleasant to watch and enchanting in their gliding fluency. But they do not always fit into the rhythm of the film when it is finished. For in these cases great difficulties arise as to the montage of the film, and quite often the moving camera shot which has been made writh utmost care and a great amount of money cannot be used. This happened for example to the street with the staircase and the lift (first example) ; in the film for which it had been made it never saw the light of the cinema projector. Erno Metzner, Budapest. F