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 #:
000201
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
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.

CLOSE UP 189 and that it would not be honorable on the part of Europe, to transfer populations to a land that has denied equal rights of citizenship to many of its most loyal families. For twelve years a liberal and moderate minded section of the German people fought a losing fight. They won popular opinion in England and America over to their side. Treaty revision and the German right to re-arm were discussed in a manner impossible anywhere some years ago. German goods were bought, German films shown and books read, and Germans were welcomed abroad as students and tourists. In exactly three weeks the national socialists smashed what it had taken twelve years of patient and unrewarding work to build. Think of their blunders ! Only a government wilfully ignorant of English conditions or extremely afraid, would ban a paper that has the Manchester Guardian's reputation for honesty and impartial criticism. How was it possible for them not to realise that Protestant and Catholic alike would re-act with horror to their boycott of inoffensive Jews. Books by Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Remarque, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zweig, Tucholsky, Feuchtwanger, Schnitzler, Glaeser, and many other authors, together with foreign translations have been taken from the libraries and publicly burnt. The writers themselves have been forced into exile and and in many cases, their possessions in Germany confiscated. Heinrich and Thomas Mann both come from a north German non-Jewish family and their work has contributed more than is realised to the overcoming of hostility towards German intellectual life at the end of the war. Heinrich Mann was, we believe, the first German writer to be invited to visit a group of French authors after the Armistice and both his books and those of his brother enjoy an international reputation. Schnitzler died before the present conflict and was never a political writer. Several of the other authors are banned merely because they wished to help towards a better feeling for France. Pabst who did more than any one, to open the cinemas of the world to German films, has been exiled and it is said a price has been put on his head should he approach a German frontier. They will never forgive him (he fraternising of French with German workmen in Kameradschajt. All his films have been banned in Germany. The men who worked with him and under him, have been scattered across Europe. It is said in fact, that barely ten per cent, of the workers in the German studios of last year, are left. Hundreds of Jewish doctors have been forbidden to practise and have been dismissed from the hospitals. They are unable to obtain work and in several cases known to me personally, they have been left to starve. Einstein and many of their best scientists are in exile. Those who waited too long, or could not afford a railway ticket, are shot or are in prison. It is quite possible that a lot of German citizens do not realise what is happening. If a man complains of his treatment or of the new laws, he is