Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 000445 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 #:
000445
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 sense) old gods will lie in the mud as profusely as do soldiers' corpses in France. The giving up of an old belief does, as a matter of fact, far less harm than retention of it ; the catch being that a new order demands faith in something ; demands the relinquishing of what has been secure. Too much of hfe is on the principle of clutching at straws so new orders are not popular. The passing from one to the other is over a chasm. So the easiest thing is to stop still, only life won't let you. If, on the other hand, the cinema is to be left to cheaply flatter the mentality of those who accept war, disease, crime and gruesome suffering, it will have signally failed in accompHshing what no other medium can do one half as thoroughly, and will deserve whatever heavenly wrath may descend upon it. Let us begin to get it right now\ Lies have been stuffed into us for so long, or what is worse, truth pruned, preened and pepnotised, that finally we deserve a little truth in the raw. As all the w^orld has heard, for instance, the beautiful heroism of Edith Cavell is now being made the subject of a film. Pauhne Frederick was originally to have the part, but British feehng ran so high they had to choose instead a British actress — Sybil Thorndike. All one can say to these fikn makers is exasperating idiots ! True, Germany has m.ade and now makes part two of an elaborate mihtaristic war film, Weltkrieg (World War), but we have seen so much in this vein, bombs, shells, wounded, advances, retreats, and the other way round, that they no longer mean much, and never did II