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 #:
000261
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 243 realisable ideas about the use of sound in films. But, of course, he isn't even allowed to go near a studio. A few years ago, when the French cinema was at its worst (in the " silent " days) when each new picture showed a more definite decline, I had hopes that a few good directors could change the whole outlook. Now I no longer think that this could be done. The whole foundation of this industry (as it prides itself on being an industry, let us call it so) is wrong and crooked. But who will have the courage to tear everything down, clear it up and begin again on a new basis ? The answer to this — where and when shall we find it ? Where is the cinema we liked ? The only real answer to this — I am afraid — the only possible solution of all these problems, lies far beyond purely cinematographic troubles. Jean Lenauer. Paris, July 1933. FILMS AND VALUES What gives the experience of seeing a certain film its value ? How are we to compare one film with another ? Why is the opinion of one film critic not as good as another ? Where does the movie art stand in the scale of values ? What is the value of the arts, anyway ? What answer have we for those who say that the arts are no longer worthy of cultivation ? Typewriters which write about films seem unable to cope with such searching questions ; but I. A. Richards has worked out these problems with special relation to poetry. In fault of a cineaste of the calibre of Mr. Richards, we might profitably apply his words to " the art of the movie ..." The experience elicited by the artistic movie is not a distinct kind of mental activity : art is no private heaven for aesthetes as the Russian lens workers contemptuously imagine. There is no aesthetic experience sui generis ; the special form attributed to the aesthetic experience being an effect of communication. To stick to Richards when we look at the screen we are not doing something quite unlike walking towards the cinema : the experience of ugliness has nothing in common with that of beauty which both do not share with innumerable other experiences no one (except Croce) would dream of calling aesthetic.