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 #:
000441
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 Taj Mahal-ish movie kiosks of savourless, dingy streets. True in those days cutting was less important, though still rather a rebuke to the maker, but now today it is exactty on a par with any wanton destruction of artistic work. Let me quote Joyless Street. Pabst was talking to me about this film, and the story is tragic but good. Germany would not back him, and eventually money was forthcoming from France. He made the film in thirty-four days working sixteen hours a day. When completed it was ten thousand feet in length, roughly the same as Ben Hiir or The Big Parade. France, on accepting it belatedly, promptly slashed out a couple of thousand feet as well as every single "shot "of the street itself. Since then bits have been added and bits taken away. Vienna, for no discoverable reason, extracted all the Werner Krauss sequences, so that he did not appear in the film at all. Russia found it necessary to turn the American lieutenant into a doctor, and turned Krauss into the murderer instead of the girl. Finally, after having run a year in Germany, an attempt was made to censor it there. In England at the Film Society it hung together in shreds. But of course in Switzerland, when it was shown, most of the English left the theatre. In England, naturally, there are no "questionable houses". The English felt they ought to imply this. So they left. So impressive. America next clears its throat and utters. America says "This is not real" and "This is not true". All America, of course, lived in Vienna just after the war, the whole of it, so it ought to know. A mere Viennese wouldn't. However, the best thing really is to do 7