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 #:
000260
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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242 CLOSE UP intelligent directors and scenarists sit waiting. They'll have to wait, till they cease to have any more original ideas. French cinema offers this incredible paradox : There are quite a number of good, healthy, talented men, who can't find any appropriate work just because they have talent. The " breaks " they got were never prepared try-outs, but lucky accidents. And the young directois wait for a job, more and more disgusted with a crying injustice. Because — while they wait in vain — the most incapable of the old " routiniers " continue their undermining, dreadful work. I don't see how anything can be changed. It would not be sufficient to allow one of them to do sensible work, to help the French cinema. One exception is not enough to drive through this dangerous imposse. The public, the so patient public, is thoroughly " through " with French films. And we see the incredible phenomenon of French patrons more and more frequenting cinemas where foreign pictures are shown. Not only do those French people who know foreign languages, accept them with enthusiasm, but the average Frenchman to-day prefers a foreign film without even understanding a word of the dialogue, because he has a feeling that those pictures are nearer to cinema than any home-product he is offered. Of course, big mistakes in judgment occur all the time. The basis of any real value having been removed, no intelligent comparison is possible, and the average cinema-goer accepts many foreign pictures which would be a big failure if they were French talkies. Snobism isn't dead yet. For one, / Am a Fugitive — one of the best pictures ever produced — one has to accept many worthless and badly done pictures like that poor melodrama Back Street, which has been running already for 7 months continuously. Tet's veil our faces, for none of the French critics seemed to think it was just too dreadful. What has become of the intelligent and precise spirit of French criticism ? Though in their defence, it may be said that " In the Kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is the big shot." Poor spiteful resignation. Nobody dares any more to express his sincere feelings. The critics, overwhelmed by the multitude of bad products, no longer know whether a picture is really good, or only acceptable as compared with other work of the same poor quality. Nobody thinks about the impossibility of an interesting production as long as financial customs of the cinema world are what they are. (Rene Clair — one of the very few who still keep a clear head on the subject — said a few months ago that the French cinema couldn't go on working under the present capitalistic system, because financial considerations necessarily keep the director from doing what his better self would suggest. But nobody really listened and his suggestions were put aside as being subversive, bolshevistic and dangerous.) Nobody bothers about the low standard of sound in French pictures, though France has musicians like Edgar Varese, with the best and most