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 #:
00051
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 natives for their visitors from mere courtesy become sensitive and alive. Taste and refinement, until now excluded by the very subject matter of these pictures, find their place again. Even painting and tattooing never before presented save under their most barbarous aspect are shown to be either hierarchical or quaint, so nearly a neighbour to official decoration or to feminine coquetry that they do not m.ake us laugh as at some grotesque happening, but only smile, at yet another aspect of the ridiculous so familiar to us. I liked the sub-titles. And generally I hate sub-titles in a film as much as I hate pictures in a book. But here from the moment the author of the film decided to make us understand what he saw, it was natural for him to address the spectator a little, a guide but one not straining after effect. Too, it is as it should be that we should not merely perceive the forms of things but also their reaction upon the mind of this traveller ; that the wit which inspired the film should be reflected in the script ; that the humour of the script should bear also on the continuity of the film. What these " documentaires" lack usually is a unity and progression common to all works of art unfolded through time. iVUegret has not sought any such artificial foundation of intrigue as made Razaff the Malgache so banal and painful ; he has maintained a true and plausible foundation of emotion. Also of intelligence. This is a spectacle seen through the intelligence. Why is it that a film of some ordinary event seems not more pleasing but more astonishing than that event itself ? It is because our eyes, faced with a familiar scene, understand and see at the same time, so 39