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 #:
000390
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Global Cinema, 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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366 CLOSE UP earlier : it was sharp confirmation of the disorganisation of cinema Paris, for it was the first time we have ever obtained false information from La Semaine A Paris. We slipped, therefore, into a tiny neighbourhood hall to see the banned Paramount picture, The Island of Doctor Moreau. Why has this picture been banned in England ? It's one of the real slowies and could only send an audience to pleasant dreams. Charles Laughton plays Doctor Moreau and Kathleen Burke is the Panther Woman. Perhaps it was Thoma who remembered, afterwards, the epigram, " Once a lady, always an acrobat." The dubbing in these American pictures is done pretty well, except that the voices are generaUy recorded from a fixed base so that there is no sound perspective. But the French trailers for the American movies are quite sensationally mixed in purpose. Each company seems to have its own formula for trailers, and all the trailers issued for that firm are visually packed up in the same boxes. Incidentally, Deslaw told us, at a chance meeting, that he was now concerned mostly with the dubbing of American talkies : as for the trailers . . . well, the boys in the Luxembourg solve the problem of the etiquette of the seasons by playing fotoball with a cricket bat. The banned German picture, Le Testament du Dr. Mabuse, was running at another neighbourhood house. It's an uneven affair which makes rather a bad impression of the visuals of madness, yet, in some gripping scenes, has the most possessed sound that was nicely scaring. The laboratory which printed the neg. got a credit title ! Sound apparatus in the small cinemas is generally efficient, although no proprietor has troubled to alter the size of the screen to the new shape. WaUs are still decorated with posters, while the hard seats of cheap wood still provide adequate means for a protest when the movie does not meet with favour. We watched Pabst shoot some scenes for De Haut en Bas : alas ! we did not see Catherine Hessling working. Pabst was very excited about going to Warner Brothers in Hollywood, but he moved about and controlled his underlings with perfect crispness. We spoke about L'Orgue des ondes, and the special instrument at the Paris radio. It packs into the small corner of a room and has the power and resonance of a monster pipe organ : undoubtedly, it wiU be introduced into the new cinemas because it is comparatively inexpensive, and because the lamps, which produce the waves, are guaranteed for fifteen years. The harvest of grapes has been so abundant that, at the railway stations, they are practically giving away glasses Of fresh juice, crushed from the vans of grapes which otherwise might be dumped. We developed a liking for the juice, and so discovered the little automatic film machines on the big stations. For fifty centimes we could watch, in a small dark square, the efforts of the latest " le record man." OSWELL BLAKESTON.