Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 000469 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 #:
000469
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 THE FILM ''STORY" One can only judge by one's own experience. I\Iy own experienced is limited. I have not spent every evening of the last twenty years in film-theatres. But so far as my hmited experience enables me to judge, I consider that America has no artistic importance whatever in the world of the cinema. Technically, in the matter of camera-craft, it has had importance. Commercially it has had, and still has, great importance. The financial methods, the absurd extravagance, the indifference to economic principles which have characterised film-exploitation in America would have ruined any industry with less rich opportunities and less vast fields of activity than the films. One hears rumours of the perilous position of some of the big companies. The marvel is that they have not all gone bankrupt. As regards the artistic future of the film it would not matter— provided that Chaphn were saved — if all HoUpvood were swallowed up in an earthquake. The loss of Ufe would be terrible and deplorable : the domestic tragedies would be agonizing ; tens of millions of simple souls would sincerely mourn in five continents ; but the artistic future of the film world would not suffer in the shghtest degree. I have never — Chaphn's work apart — seen a good American film. 27