Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 00031 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 #:
00031
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 focus. Even the indoor shots which depend on artificial light and not on outdoor conditions had a blurred, edged, indefinite quality which manj^ amateurs using a little ten guinea camera would disdain. It was stated that most of the outside shots were taken in Northern France where the light is excellent in summer and besides, with modem photographic equipment and film, much better results can be achieved even in the English climate, than one would imagine seeing only English commercial films. But beyond the photography was the film itself — full of the kind of sentimentality that miakes one shudder, a sentimentality that HoUy^vood even would not dare offer to a Middle Western audience... mixture of a Victorian tract for children and a cheap serial in the sort of magazines one finds discarded on a beach. One of the main incidents of the film showed two wounded soldiers in a bam. They fight off a section of German cavalry— this, though improbable (as suggested by the film) and badly photographed, might pass. The Germans then set fire to the straw at the entrance to the barn. After sniffing and talking and joking through yards of close ups, it occurs to the soldiers (who if they had had any kind of training would not have gone to sleep in the straw the moment the\^ had shot down a couple of Germans and realized more might be outside) that they had better move. Verj^ slowly they drag each other down the stairs. The straw sends out conveniently a flicker of light smoke. The Germans, grouped as in an early Mctorian picture of a parade, v/ait outside to shoot the men as they emerge. At the exact moment — like a child playing nine 19