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 #:
000411
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 that, they did that with Greta Garbo, that stare on the stairs, getting the quahty of her e^'es all wrong, getting it all wTong, they would go and do that, one sees their process of argument, one sees they think they are improving their show with this sort of thing, one sees they think these vaudeville shows better than movies, the superior thing, what a clumsy idea, they would go and do something like that. I camie to see a movie, I was beginning to settle in, I was beginning to get at something, I was beginning to see things. They will go and spoil it all, now this is too much, this is where the hell are my matches, is that fat woman gcing to sit beside me ? Well that is better, she might have sat beside me, and she has already dropped her handkerchief, w^ell let her drop her handkerchief, I don't mind people dropping their handkerchiefs in movie shows, there I have dropped my cigarette case. Xo one would do all this so differently, one would I know, I know, that long corridor, I want to think that out today, I want to get that long corridor, not that thing with arches, something simple, not bare, simple. Oh well, it's restful sitting here, I am blurring in, yes all that colour, that hghting, people come here to be happy, there is a feeling of freeness here, one relinquishes. One does sink in, fade in, I was forgetting the people behind me, they are watching the vaudeville, the hoy and the girl who were busy being in love are watching the vaudeville, I used to think the man with the organ sat 3± the side somewhere out of sight, I w^onder hov/ he does those drum notes, there's something so much more right and intelh 57