Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

Page scan 000350 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1933
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000350
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:
June 20, 2024
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326 CLOSE UP To repeat : we are incensed because films are shown to the public, who are always about five years behind and have just dimly associated ' document ' with ' culture,' under false prestige and false pretences : were these films to be presented to the public as drama, the exhibitors would be lynched. To repeat : we want documents which wiU show, with the clarity and logic of a scholar's thesis, the subjects they are supposed to tackle : we want no more filtered skies, ' Russian ' montage and other vulgarities in our ' educational ' productions. O.B. THE PRIMEVAL AGE OF CINEMA There is always a special pleasure in seeing films produced in the early years of cinema. For, though the first films were made not even forty years ago you think that we are separated from them by ages. Which might be due to the general law — if we undertake to compare the evolution of cinema to human life — that any development in its first stages goes more briskly than in later ones. Or, considering our average film of to-day, have we not yet entered the state of being grown up and settled, and will the spectators of 1970 feel the same strangeness towards our present films ? Provided they will be able to see them. For there seems to be no central place throughout the whole world where films are collected and kept beyond their period of actual use. Archives, a film-library so to speak. Where films are kept from the point of view of history and history of civilization. It does not seem necessary to discuss the difficulties of building up such an institution, for they are evident. But I am sure that they could be overcome and I am convinced that it would be greatly worth while. This conviction I acquired seeing a collection of early films which WALTER JERVEN has shown to us in Vienna under the title " Die Urzeit des Knios " (The primeval age of cinema). Mr. Jerven has collected his reels with love and interest, and he is proud of his " curios " most of which are unique, all the other copies having been burnt or lost. The collection is arranged chronologically, starting from the very first beginning : Laterna-magica-films, designed — not yet photographed — showing a primitive joy in producing movement, such as the whirling of snowflakes or turning wheels of a train. Later on photographed scenes, simple records : traffic in the streets, the fire brigade, etc. There is something peculiar about these earliest shots, basing upon a wrong psychological theory : our eyes, people thought at that time, are not able to grasp new impressions when the picture is in movement ; consequently a shot has to be shown as " still " for a few seconds, then the film suddenly starts moving, and at the end there is the same in reversed order. I should advise every film-operator to try to show a