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 #:
000148
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 the sound of the orchestra for a couple of reels. Tension created by the film gives rise to the unconscious infantile sucking habit. The sudden frenzy of chocolate eating and cigarette lighting immediately accompanies an emotional climax, and so one supposes cigarette smoking and chocolate eating are not the things to attack, but the mummy wrappings on the boxes, and the indiscriminate striking of matches while the film is in progress. I have heard, too, the breaking of a female voice across drama. . . ''Ices?. . . Chocolates?. . . Cigarettes?" In suavest theatres, drifting forms going to and fro. "Chocolates ?. . . Ices ?. . . Cigarettes ?" Making a kind of market place of the gangways, her progress rung by the chink of coins, and long confabulations raucously whispered, and voices hailing from five rows back. * * * We spoke last month of the need for a cinema that would show old films from time to time, films of special interest or qualitj^ A praiseworthy effort is being made in this direction by the Cinema du Vieux-Colombier in Montpellier. There are of course great difiiculties in the way of such a step, trade prejudice, for example. However the Vieux Colombier is making an excellent start. Rien que les heures by Cavalcanti, Jazz, by James Cruze, and Joyless Street by Pabst are among their revivals. 64