Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 00029 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Nov 1927
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00029
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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP A mild interest in what America would make of the war took one first to "The Big Parade." Subsequently I saw it five more times in London, once in a slightly different version, abroad. The first impression was of courage — hov/ had they dared put across in a picture meant for multitudes... so much scorn of war, so much stripping of what people in general like to regard as heroism... the reckless unthinking plunge into an army, the actual dirt and horror and tyranny behind all warfare. After seeing the picture seven times, the first impression rem.ains that the greatness of "The Big Parade" v/as in the early opening scenes, the sweeping of everyone into som.ething that thej/ did not clearly understand, the enlistment through sheer mass hypnotism, the unthinking but definite cruelty of many women seeing war as romance instead of reality — the best lesson to those with eyes to read of the necessity of real education of people, instead of a standard fitting of a few facts and no real thought to hundreds of schoolchildren. Beyond this there was the clear photography, the authentic feel of the film, the extraordinary impression of the rush of lorries, the queer terror of the woods. It was amazing how much fear could be suggested in the m_ere continuous pace of movement. I felt in the English version that the transition from the lorries rushing up the French cobbles to the plunge into the woods was almost too abrupt. In the French version the journey up was longer, and there was more of the fight in the 17