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 #:
000442
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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 as England did. It didn't mutilate. It cut it out altogether. And one thing I know is that the English (no not that class that walks out in Switzerland, but the workers) given the film straight would be the first to praise it. But the mediators and others say no. And this, you will gather, is only one instance of what happens to every director. Was it Rien que les Heures that Cavalcanti sent out with ten sub-titles to have it presented in due course with over fifty ? La P'tite Lilie — a ten-minute film — they could not even leave alone, but cut the sequences that showed the whole film story was a song only. Foreign fihns do get to England, but isn't it like some process of awful starvation that they are almost always, when finally they are released, skeletons of their former selves ? Secrets Of the Soul lost (except for the sheer student of psycho-analysis) all meaning. Metropolis was a complete flop in every sense. They took out (one felt rather tore out at random) every moment the film had. And I forget who it was, but somebody filled it with Sunday School axioms. Clearly something ought to be done. Nothing actually much more scandalous could exist. In the reahn of logic, for any man to scoop out scenes from any film made by any artist, good or bad, is equivalent to accusing him of bad taste or indecency or even (remembering frequent official attitudes) crime. And men like Pabst, Murnau, Grune, Cavalcanti, should not be expected to bow before such impHcations. 8