Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 00092 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 #:
00092
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 in a certain way means to the habitue that she is going to be seduced by Roy D'arcy. To the novice it means she is rather unnecessarily wagghng her torso. The habitue knows that certain things mean menace, certain things inevitable denouements. A dropped letter will send his mind hopping and skipping and jumping prophetically dow^n the course of the storj^ to the final amatory close-up. To the novice it m.eans not a thing. It is a convention, and like conventions of everj^ kind, to be avoided as much as possible or improved upon. Not that convention m_atters when it is really representative. But I have not seen many convincing matters of technique except close-ups of letters to read with one thumb on each side of the screen, and things of that kind. But be it noted, I speak here of the commonly accepted formulas, not of certain sets of symbols used here and there individually. Many more experimenters are necessary before we must think of beginning to make conventions, and of course, it is to be remembered that progress is being made every day, new ideas, new developments. We do not know yet how far it can go, but inevitably it must go on and on for a long way yet. There i? already the rJm that will take in twilight, and the next thing will be the abolition of arc lamps, there is already the attachment by which the camera is fitted to the body of the photographer, and thus moved as the eye of a person might move, there is already the enlarged screen, the ground glass screen for stereoscopic projection, the beginning of sound wdth films (and how awful this is going to be for a time ! ) and 12