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 #:
000236
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 medium as it has been developed by the poor examples of the craft. I have never seen a really satisfying film. I go but seldom, scarcely at all. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari which I saw a short time ago, offers the only interesting method I have ever seen in use, and that film was of interest to me only as a promise, not at all as an achievement, for I disUked the trick in the end of the drama. Fantasy has its own rights and need not be crouched under an insane mind. Some of the scenes were very beautiful, though, in the haunting play of Unes on hues, and in the relation of the hues to the human figures that moved before them. Other scenes were too small for the figures that moved before them. Elizabeth Madox Roberts author of The Time of Man. POINTS FROM LETTERS An expensive medium of expression. A form of entertainment which appeals to the taste of the masses can never become an art. Certainly artistic films have been produced, but the expenses of cinematography seriously limit their numbers. You mention that "£ioo will make a film as noble as anything you can wish to see" : apart from the question whether nobihty constitutes art, the statement confounds me upon reflection ! £ioo is cheap com 70