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Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.A1 C63 1998

 

Donald, James, Anne Friedberg, and Laura Marcus, eds.  Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism.  Princeton, Princeton UP, 1998.

Offers a very generous selection of articles printed in Close Up from 1927 to 1933. The anthology is organized into eight parts:

Part 1, "Enthusiasms and Execrations" on the potentials of various national and independent cinemas (introduced by James Donald);

Part 2, "From Silence to Sound" on the controversy of the coming of sound, which the editors of Close Up generally opposed (also introduced by James Donald);

Part 3, "The Contribution of HD" which reprints many of HD's theoretical essays and reviews of films (introduced by Laura Marcus);

Part 4, "Continuous Performance: Dorothy Richardson" which reprints many pieces from Richardson's "Coninuous Performance" column (introduced by Laura Marcus);

Part 5, "Borderline and the POOL films" which includes HD's pamphlet on Borderline, the 1931 film in which she starred with Paul and Eslanda Robeson (introduced by Anne Friedberg);

Part 6. "Cinema and Psychoanalysis" which includes a variety of film critics and psychoanalysts on the relationship between film and psychology/psychoanalysis (introduced by Laura Marcus).

Part 7, "Cinema Culture" on the political and educational potential of film (introduced by James Donald and Anne Friedberg);

Part 8, "Fade" marks Close Ups ending and the coming of World War II.

Appendices include the full table of contents of all issues of Close Up; contributors notes; Publishng history including POOL books; and Anne Friedberg's Chronology of Close Up in Context (reprinted from her dissertation (NYU 1983)).

 

tagged 1920s closeup film gwpabst hd psychoanalysis by aliki ...on 04-MAY-06
"Writing about Cinema: Close Up 1927-1933" Dissertation Abstracts International [0419-4209] 44.12 (1984). 3522A-. [Request through ILL]
 
Anne Friedberg argues for the importance of Close Up as an early film journal. The journal's purpose was to "interrogate cinema's formal potential" in order to promote better films and filmmaking (325) . Close up did not present one monolithic view of cinema but rather created a forum for debate about the "stylistic, technological, educational, and psychoanalytic potentials of the cinema" (328). Friedberg also argues that as a periodical, Close Up circulated more easily than the films it covered, thus it "served as a more practical way to transmit theoretical ideas about cinema than did the viewing of films themselves" (325). Friedberg includes chapters on Writing about Cinema; 'The Editorial Three'; POOL books and films; Close Up as international journal and salon; and the focal distance of reading. The very useful "Appendix III: A Chronology of Close Up in Context" is reprinted in the Close Up anthology edited by Donald, Friedberg, and Marcus [see entry in my Film and Psychoanalysis project].
Call#: Van Pelt Library PS310.M65 M37 2005
 

McCabe, Susan. Cinematic Modernism: Modernist Poetry and Film. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge UP, 2005.


McCabe touches on Pabst passim. Of particular interest is her discussion of "H.D.'s unremitting admiration of Pabst--from Joyless Street to having 'vanquished the border-sphere' in Secrets of a Soul" (162). McCabe suggests that H.D. was attracted to Pabst's "feminine" film style which influenced her own film aesthetic.