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 #:
000457
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 rain and bare trees dripping, she comes face to face with Henning. They stand a long time in the swirl of wind and rain, then go straight to each others' arms. Presently she goes on again as before, leaving him. He stands there while she continues her way to the boat. It is a simple scene, yet handled with such poignancy and sensitiveness one's hair literally stood on end, and it will stand on end quite frequently in the course of this film. Another moment that emerges is after the church scene in Paris at night. The two lovers have gone with complete naturalness and disarming honesty to a cheap Montparnasse hotel. (Who but Pabst can paint in so surely and boldly these cheap and tawdry hostels ?) From their room they look down across the street at a wedding party going on. The contrast may be meant as a comment on marriage, but it fitted there with the stab of perfection ; a deft, intensely moving slight moment, yielding in some way, curious beauty, nervous and restrained and intensely spiritual. In the cold morning light, a glance toward that same window reveals the wreckage of the marriage feast. The amazing manner in which the impression that the happiness of these two was some swift and ephemeral thing, too swift perhaps, and too intense and too unconscious, was all the time conveyed, can be no secret of technique, but some profound, dynamic genius. It is noteworthy how realism in the settings cemented the realism of the characterisation. It is noteworthy too, that realism in the settings never obtruded or took possession of the story, as it might have done say in the rain scene, but 23