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 #:
000279
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 261 unanimous yawnings — not to mention peculiarities of narrative, and contrasts in racial sensibility. (The pigmy drops his staff so that Mr. J. may measure him ; is in doubt about the propriety of recovering it ; withdraws in embarrassment from refined white obliviousness). And other studies in " native bravado." In Seeing Europe on a Budget — the Burton Holmes lecture with motion pictures by Andre La Varre — black and white sheep of varying sizes and the Magyar shepherd in full-length natural fleece mantle, were a hit ; also Hungarian pigs fed from both sides of the trough, the momentum of the drove resulting in an occasional pig chairing ; a flock of ducks entering a pond on a glide so smooth the transition from running to floating was undetectible. Part of this travelogue was the white marble Spanish Riding School of Vienna filmed by Bryson Jones ; followed by ski-jumping and miscellaneous skill on steep slopes. Leap and landing were here so well pieced and the detail contributing to equilibrium — on new snow — when leaping gullies and circling obstructions was so neat that by comparison, the average newsreel version is like a jig-saw puzzle before the piecer begins. Lacking the technical merits of the Burton Holmes, and not to be compared in style with the ShippeeJohnson pictures of Peru, was / am From Siam photographed by Karl Rovilov — a record under difficulties, of the cremation ceremonies of the late King Rama VI of Siam and of the coronation of King Prajadipok. Sunday supplements gave an idea of the samovar-like grandeur of the glassy gold mountain of the coronation throne (ascended behind a curtain) but did not suggest the nervousness of the occasion as the conscientious potentate accepted one by one the symbols of office and placed the crown on his head, none lesser than a crowned head being fit to touch a king's head, and the strewing — in benediction — of gold flowers from a little gold bowl. Nor could anything but motion suggest the. pompous inability of the elephants to be stereotyped, the top-heaviness of the three-tiered parasols, the wiriness and blood of the horses. Following the aristocratic portion of the film, the popular portion : a motley of sports, habits, and occupations : the swarming hallowe'en skirmish of figures on stilts with animal heads, the foot-ball game played with a tennis-ball — goaled through napkin rings ; convoy of the little white elephant to the temple of purification, through streets lined with banana-trees to simulate jungle. (Shown with the foregoing, the desperate and blastworthy Puss in Boots). The Mystic Land of Peru by Robert Shippee, co-leader and geologist of the ShippeeJohnson Expedition to the Peruvian Andes. Lieut. George R. Johnson being chief photographer of the Expedition. Plain and piebald llamas ; stray dogs ; mules reluctantly crossing a grass suspension bridge of the kind Pizarro saw — as though walking on a hammock — with grandly designed backdrop of dim peaks and clear mountain-side — a remnant of civilization in the Lost Valley of the Colca, marching to music from souvenir bugles, flutes, and drums, played by home-folk-deserters from the army — with a ceremonial head to the procession, of tin pans of silver mounted on sticks. The photographic moment in it all, no doubt is bread-making on the mountain side, by a native woman — beginning with elephant trunk-like motion of the body strangely continued : a back view in which the feet are revealed winnowing