ABSTRACT
In the English-speaking world, ‘modernism’ became connected to cinema belatedly, in articles American poet H.D. wrote for the British lm journal Close-Up in 1930 and 1931. For H.D., ‘modern’ meant a spare aesthetics (‘the lean skyscraper beauty of ultra-modernity’) responsive to contemporary life (H.D. 1998 [1930]: 228). In her view, this denition applied to the expressionist lms of the German UFA studios and the Soviet montage lms of Sergei Eisenstein and V.I. Pudovkin, abstract lms, and the unconventional narratives of James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber – and of Close-Up editor Kenneth Macpherson. H.D.’s application of ‘modernism’ to lm never caught on; non-commercial lms were instead labelled ‘avant-garde’, ‘experimental’, ‘artistic’, ‘independent’, ‘amateur’, and ‘underground’.1 Despite this terminological gap, the lms referred to by these denominations were regarded by most as part of modernism across the arts.
