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 #:
00054
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 could not) have, are emphasised out of any conceivable proportion. The whole of animal psychology, a fascinating and intricate study, is not only ignored, but more often than not, a kind of cheap, sentimental, and, to any animal lover, very painful abortion is evolved, whereby animals are represented as blown out with a kind of pompous human attitude, and their very often superior qualities softened and blurred in human imitation, plus omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. Though this does not apply to films of actual jungle or wild life. It is the story film, I mean. Quite several animals could be trained into excellent film subjects, though sometimes there would be difficulties in securing them. For instance, the hippopotamus, the tapir, the giraffe, the first and the last being easy to tame, and intelligent. They are fascinating creatures, and their habits and ways so subtle, that a film giving true value to them would be in the nature of a revelation. Among other large animals, not so difiicult to procure, one nearly always finds they are essentially falsified, not emphasised, which would be permissible, but ruined by the old tradition clinging to animal toys, teddy bears, porky pigs, bunny rabbits, etc. Lions are dubbed "fierce" and brindle through incredible slapdash. The poor frightened heroine shut in with a lion, crouching in a corner. Actually it is the lion that crouches (when the camera stops working) shivering and cowing, and prodded before it will open its mouth. Its fierce roar is a 42