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 #:
000215
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 it is one based on the pleasure-principle and antagonistic to reality. Those who cUng to their "Omnipotence" stage with the accompanying egocentricity, never get reconciled to the renunciation of their unconscious irrational wishes and "on the shghtest provocation feel themselves insulted and shghted and regard themselves as step-children of fate, because they cannot remain her only or favourite children." It is not difficult to see that the characteristics of the Cinema referred to above are just those which must foster and develop this magic "omnipotence" sense, to a greater degree than is possible in the case of fairy-tale, novel, drama, or picture, and does so independently, to a large degree, of the theme dealt with by the film. It is the method of the moving picture which brings about so vividly the sense of wish-fulfilment as by magic. The Cinema's business is to give a solution to all problems, an answer to all questions, and a key to every locked door. Real life is complex, unselective, often baffling to our curiosity and regardless of our desires : the Film's simplifications and problem-solving creates the fantasy that the spectator's wishes are or can be, fulfilled, and this helps to maintain his omnipotence and narcissim, leading to a regressive attitude : That is to say a return to the pleasure-seeking infancy with its magically fulfilled desires, since it is alwa^^s easier for the Ego to retread known paths which have alread}^ yielded pleasure than to go forvvard on paths yet untried and calling for effort. But this latter process is essential to the child's development and through it alone can he attain to mental maturity. An even more serious consequence is the 49