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 #:
000298
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:
June 20, 2024
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280 CLOSE UP " musica " ? One man stands apart and takes his psychic temperature with a cornet ! [And the songs, the cheerless songs, the women sing about their work !] BULLFIGHT. LJnsuitable ladies in mantillas. Sweating peasants drink aad eat things (including green worms) from buckets. It is all slow, slow, slow. . . (it's a long worm that has not turning !) . . . ALHAMBRA. Official photos of what the alhambra looked like in 1911 and what it looks like today. Local literature praising rebuilt Moorish architecture for its intricate lacework which looks "as if the architect had been aided by a swarm of bees ? " And who wants architecture built by bees ? Guides, having learnt their English in the Berlitz School, bustle up with, " I Berlit, I Berlit, I show you round I " . . . " That is a very NOVEL dog ; you will not see another dog like that in the whole of Spain ! " EXTERIORS. Golden eagles. Ravines with cave dwellers and insincere dogs which help with the washing. Wild bulls in deserted monastries neglecting to ring the angelus. Snakes : " Go away, ekanes ! " Fields bandaged off by luzuriously tinted flowers. . .' . PRODUCTION NOTE. The best sherry in the world for threepence a glass, and cognac and rum added to coffee without charge. But, for a drink to quench the mid-day thirst there is no ordinarily priced wine which is not resinous, no mineral water which is not either filthy to the palate or rank poison. How many fall for a vision of mountain spring water with a spar of ice in it ? THEN . . . sitting on a bucket (the right way up !) in a small hotel instructing mice, in a loud voice, not to stare ! TRANSPORT. Spanish trains are apt to turn into tanks and wander across country. FOOD. Coarse and ample. A vendor will take water from a drain to make his ices. TEMPERATURE CHART. There is the sad fable of an Englishmen who walked out of a hotel in a blue suit : in a few seconds his suit had turned white. The Englishman was too ashamed to return to his room and had to work his passage back to England half across the world ! FILMIC CONSEQUENCE. Andalusia should be explored only on the films, where everything can be seen as a picture, not allowing the horrors to break away from the pattern. O.B.