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 #:
000205
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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CLOSE UP 193 disorganized all production schedules, threw hundreds of workers into the ranks of the unemployed, dumped upon the market from the vaults of one of the biggest companies more than two million dollars worth of accumulated film stories, and, after this devastating sweep through the studios, left the remaining occupants, peer and commoner alike, with but half of their former pay. Amid the prevailing dust and confusion it is impossible at the moment to foresee the outcome. One thing appears certain, however : Wall Street bankers and other moneyed individuals who for years have been dumping gold into the bottomless pit of Hollywood's fatuous prodigality — bewitched in common with humbler mortals by the glamour of the movies — will have nothing more to do with the business under the old regime. They have waked up to their folly, disillusioned, as well as intolerably bitten, and have pulled shut the drawstrings of their now flabby money bags. As creditors, there is present talk among them of installing a financial dictator, to take over the management of Hollywood in the hope of pulling themselves out of the hole. All that may deter them is the superstition which Hollywood from the beginning has assiduously propagated, that there is some peculiar magic involved in the making of pictures — a magic whose secret is known only to the Hollywood initiates. The producers themselves, deprived for the nonce of their accustomed financial support, and fearful of losing their official heads, if nothing more, are frightenedly casting about for some means whereby they can continue their business on a self-sustaining basis. Being an untried procedure on their part, they have turned to their high priest, Will Hayes, for comfort and guidance. That handv gentleman, with characteristic optimism, has alreadv brought forward a five-point programme of readjustment. Among other things, by way of a novel experiment, it calls for the application to the industry of intelligent economies and management. Emboldened by this revolutionary suggestion, Mr. Hayes goes even farther and tops off his programme by calling upon the producers " to stabilize motion-picture entertainment as a major art," and to so regulate their instincts, " that the screen ma} reflect the highest possible social standards." Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Well, this is a day of miracles, and even the impossible may not offhand be so adjudged. Hollywood has more than once confounded a skeptic world. Storm-tossed as it now is, with rudders damaged and much costly cargo doomed to be jettisoned, there can nevertheless be no doubt of its eventual mastery of the situation. A Jonah — several Jonahs — may have to be pitched overboard, and mayhap a different captain placed in command, along with a less rollicking crew, but Hollvwood as an institution will remain impregnable so long as man's primitive delight in story and picture continues to inhere in an evolving civilizaton. Clifford Howard.