Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 00039 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 #:
00039
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 Greta Garbo in Montreux, Switzerland, trailing with frail, very young feet through perhaps the most a.stonishingly consistently lovely film I have ever seen (''Joyless Street") could not be, but by some fluke of evil magic, the same creature I saw, with sewed-in, black lashes, with waist-lined, svelte, obvious contours, with gowns and gowns, all of them almost (by some anachronism) trailing on the floor, with black-dj'ed wig, obscuring her own nordic nimbus, in the later a" Torrent". The Censor, this magnificent ogre, had seen fit to devitalize this Nordic flower, to graft upon the stem of a living, wild camellia (if we may be fanciful for a moment) the most blatant of obvious, crepe, tissue-paper orchids. A beauty, itis evident, from the Totem's stand-point, must be a vamp, an evil woman, and an evil woman, in spite of all or any observation to the contrary, must be black-eyed, must be dark even if it is a nordic ice-flower and Lya de Puttiesque. Beauty is v^hat the Lump and the Leaven alike demand. So "beauty, here it is," says the Ogre. The Ogre knows that the world will not be sustained, will not exist without that classic, ancient Beauty. Beauty and Goodness, I must again reiterate, to the Greek, meant one thing. To Kalon, the beautiful, the good. Kalon, the mob must, in spite of its highbrow detractors, have. The Ogre knows enough to know that. But he paints the lily, offers a Nice-carnival, frilled, tissue-paper rose in place of a wild-briar. Beauty was made to endure, in men, in flowers, in hearts, in spirits, in minds. That flame, in spite of the highbrow detractors, exists at the very centre, the very heart of the 27