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 #:
000207
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 Baldwin becomes violent, destructive. The spectre shares his evil end, gloats in it. Yet apart. . .having some life outside humanity. . .following, following, till we want to scream, "strangle him get rid of him, one or the other, let this duaUty perish if Baldwin perish with it." Baldwin does so finally perish, having lured the shadow back into the frame of the mirror in the now deserted attic. He shoots the spectre only to find himself bleeding with the bullet wound. The bullet aimed so adroitly at the breast of the image in the mirror has, by some psychic affinity, entered his own heart. So dies Baldwin. Across our vision however there is something that will never die. It can't go. It lives among other things, in the haunting melody (the music finally did come right) of du meine Herzen, du mein Ruhe. Baldwin (before the final denouement) has finally, in wind and storm (this might have been well pictured to the Erlkonig motif) broken into the garden and the manor of his mistress. We find her great-eyed and adequate, without charm but with some fine distinction in i86o-ish surroundings ; great mirrors, heavy candelabra, the wide French windows and the sweeping of wind-blown branches. There is authentic swish and swirl of branches and has anything ever been more subtly dramatic than the entering of broken rose-petals and damp leaves with the opening of that wide door ? Baldwin, the man become a shadow, stands before his Lady. We see in a moment, she is that. What she lacks in charm is supplied by the ardour of her lover. He is at her knees, at her feet. He will explain. He wiU and he will and he wiU. We know 41