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 #:
000453
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 and that we cannot be, do you see ? " We did — only too well. With each new film in this category the fight grows steadily harder and harder. It doesn't end either with the making of the film. Rather that is where it begins. This will not do, we cannot have that, you must do this, you must cut out that, you must add in the other thing. As example, there is a scene in Die LiebeDer Jeanne Ney where a j^oung Communist quite simply accompanies the girl, Jeanne, into a church. He has just come from the Crimea, and has been with her for the first time, walking through the poor streets of Paris, loading her with flowers from the market flower-sellers' baskets. It is a scene full of warmth and deep feehng and the ardour of young people for whom there will be (one feels) brief and flaming passages of sheer lovKness. They are dazed by each other, covering their feelings with gaietj/^ and gay tributes. The passing into church was a half-hypnotised, small adventure. "AU they have said," Pabst could laugh at this, "is that a Communist would not go to church. I say to them, T am showing that. . . this. . . .Communist. . .does. . .go. . .to church.' 'Oh, but a Communist doesn't go to church'. 'Well I am showing you how this Communist did go to church'." There may not be now or ever a world fit for artists and heroes to five in, but there definitely is a world where artists and heroes must be allow^ed to exist, and they are not going to be hounded out of it through lack of fighting. This film, then, let us say, has got to be the success it deserves to be. The answ^er is well how ? What can we do ? Firstly we ^9