Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Page scan 000245 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 #:
000245
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 Vol. X. No. 3 September, 1933 THE ACTOR'S WORK: FILM v. STAGE Translated by Vera Sonutchinsky under the supervision of Marie Seton By V. I. Pudovkin The problem of the difference between stage and screen acting is an old one. It has been raised again and again and discussed from varied points of view, but, fundamentally, it has never been precisely and clearly solved. I should like to start by demonstrating the fundamental distinction between stage and cinema work and then, on the basis of this distinction, to examine the respective methods of acting in the two art-forms. I shall take as basis for this distinction the difference between the respective techniques. By " technique " I mean the sum total of technical means at the disposal of the theatre or film worker enabling him to convey to his audience the series of impressions that constitutes, in effect, the work of art being presented on stage or screen. Let us analyse the theatre first. The stage is a unit of real space of given size, and the actors move upon it in accordance with the natural laws of real space. The audience is separated from the stage by a real and constant distance. In order that all that is shown or spoken upon the stage should reach the eyes or ears of the spectator sufficiently clearly and comprehensibly (which is most essential), this distance between the stage and the audience must be overcome. The necessity to overcome this distance is the paramount technical convention, inherent in the theatre, and it determines a host of special methods peculiar on the stage. Supposing, for example, an actor gives upon the stage a slight " start," this if unemphasized will not and cannot be perceptible to the spectators in the auditorium. The actor must either " give a start " with an exaggeratedly vigorous movement, or substitute for the " start " some other and more obvious gesture expressing sudden fright. In this connection it is of especial interest to recall the Japanese theatre, which presents, in my view, one of the purest forms of genuine stagecraft. I have seen a Japanese actor " trembling with fury," do so in so emphasized a manner that the trembling became a peculiar convulsive swinging to and fro. A motion which, it should be noted, in its environment of the general course and construction of the play, produced an extremely vivid and pertinent effect. Exactly as with gesture,