Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Nov 1927
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00032
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP pins— an English battery sends a shot into the precise middle of the Uhlans who gallop in terror away. The straw flames with the barn. The soldiers topple out, saved. This may have been a true story. The point is, that as it was photographed, it gave the impression of a caricature and sent not only myself, but a couple of ex-soldiers sitting behind me, into shouts of laughter. Worse was to follow. The same two wounded men trailed after the army, one wheeling the other in a wheelbarrow. They can go no further. The Germans are just behind them. Impressive moment. At the instant they abandon hope, a detachment of English soldiers see them and rush back to help. But the man who with the Germans behind him, had not been able to move a step further, the moment that fresh unwounded soldiers, come to his aid, waves them off to chase along the road, wheeling his friend, as if it were a comic race in some military sports. The whole incident was preposterous and unpleasant. Not in itself, but in the way it was photographed and handled. In several other scenes it was quite impossible to distinguish English from Germans, so vaguely was the scene lit. There was no central idea back of the picture. The whole theme was "we are English making an English picture, therefore be good to us". And that will not make either a commercial or an artistic success of British films. "The Emden", a German film seen abroad, was very nearly a successful attempt to make an epic out of the very limited photographic material of a cruiser. Life at sea during war, the sinking of ships, a naval battle, restrict the photographer 20