Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

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256 CLOSE UP Correspondencia Particular, De Los Consejeros del Departamento de Bellas Artes. To the Editor of CLOSE UP. Sir, An invitation signed by Upton Sinclair to attend a private showing of a film made by Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico was forwarded to me some time ago by some friends in Los Angeles. This induced me to send you these lines with my request that they may be inserted in the magazine under your management. About two years ago, Robert Flaherty and Dudley Murphy, who happened to know my keen interest for the cinema and the studies I had made in this connection, gave Eisenstein letters of introduction to me, in which they expressed their opinions that Eisenstein and I would assuredly coincide concerning the artistic and technical points of view of a film that was to be made in this country. During our initial conversation, I suggested to Eisenstein that a work which necessarily had to deal with some phases of social and political movements of Mexico would place him and his aids under a great responsibility. I stressed the fact that a great deal of care would have to be exercised in order completely to avoid all possibility of misinterpretation. Eisenstein invited me to collaborate with him upon the preliminary outline of the scenario, the choice of locations and the arrangements of details. From that time our work together went as far as to my personal assistance in the shooting of the picture. I accepted this task seeing the great importance of such a work of art, and because of Eisenstein being in it. While we were engaged upon our preliminary work, the government of my country requested me to act as its official supervisor. My task would be to ascertain the authenticity of types and costumes as well as observe that the definition of social and political tendencies of the story would be true to the original script, previously notifying Mr. Eisenstein that without my formal approval the film could not be taken. Only after talking over with Mr. Eisenstein of my government's request and having reached complete agreement with him about details, I accepted the responsibility as official supervisor of the film. From there on every facility was extended to Mr. Eisenstein ; and it was due to my personal standing with the government that a permit was issued for the exportation of the undeveloped film to the United States, where developing, cutting and montage were to be done. I must stress that in having obtained this permit for Mr. Eisenstein, we overcame a very strict requirement that no film is allowed to go out of Mexico without being censored and approved by a special office the government maintains for this purpose. We secured this special concession upon the implicit condition that I would make a final supervision of the finished film prior to its release. The agreement with my government included the stipulation that my supervision would not only involve the taking of the picture, but its cutting and