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 #:
00042
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP flavoured establishment and the secret murder, wasn't commonplace, wasn't trivial, partook of the most etherial overtones of subtlety. Tragedy rang like little bells, fain.' bells almost. Tragedy didn't dare, those days, to stalk openly in its ornate purple. Not in Europe, not in London or Paris or Vienna. Murder and pearls and speculation seemed perilouslv a part of life in those days. Tragedy was a muse whose glor^' was for the moment over-shadowed with an almost mystical, hardly to be expressed quality that one might possibly define as pathos. Beaut}' and the warrior were at rest. For the rest of us in London and Paris and Vienna, there was something different, something too subtle to be called disinte^ation or dissociation, but a state in which the soul and body didn't seem on good tenns. Hardly on speaking terms. So it is that this fine little Greta Garbo with her youth, her purity, her straight brows and her unqualifi.ed distinction found a role to fi-t her. She had, it is true, appeared, I am. told, creditably in other films ; it was my good fortune to m.eet her first in this " Jojdess Street" or, asitwasbilledin our lake Geneva smallto\ra, "La Petite Rue Sans Joie". The theatre, I need hardly say, was half empty. The periomiance began with a street (will I ever forget it) and the sombre plodding limp of a onelegged, old ruffian. Xo appeal to pity, to beaut}', the distinguished mind that conceived this opening said simply, this is it, this is us, no glory, no pathos, no glamour. Just along, Freudian, tunnel-like, dark street. Nothing within sight, nothing to dream of or ponder on but. . . the butcher's shop with its attendant, terrible, waiting line of frenzied women. 30