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 #:
000452
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 something better and something better all the time ; that there is a considerable part of the population clamouring for good films and a diminishing of cheap, flaccid and unapplied ones, there will be no more good ones. As things are the better a film is the less is its chance of success. That is not the fault of the public, for there is a large and ever increasing percentage of people who want the best there is to see, it is partly the fault of bad organisation, lack of provision and foresight and initiative, and partly the fault of intermediaries ; wretched people who get between you and the producer in neat, almost militaristic array, waving aside what is not innocuous or peurile or base. The genius producer can exert pressure at his end, but alone he cannot fight the monster that is choking him ; the public must lend its weight. The producer is the wedge, but the public is the sledge hammer that must drive it through. So then, what are we going to do about Die Liebe Der Jeanne Ney ? I have said this is a film that makes film history. It is better than Joyless Street, more complete in some subtle way, swifter in action, more breath-taking not so tragic, more dynamic. Pabst said "You have no idea how difficult it is for us to make good pictures, of how I had to fight to make this picture. It is really terrible. Thej^ want us to make onh^ fihns in the American style. And I say to them, we are not Americans, we cannot make pictures in the iVmerican style, (even if we wanted to) for the w^hole of our mentahty is different. To make American pictures w^e must be American in our mind. i8