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 #:
000471
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 And I have seen finer compositional results than those of "Vaudeville". A few weeks ago, in Berlin, a small party of which I happened to be a member was given a private performance of a film (I will not name it, as it is not yet released) whose photography in my opinion reached a higher level than any film has ever reached before. It was an almost continuous series of lovely pictures. The beauty of them thrilled us. And the acting was fairly good. But the story told by the lovely pictures was contemptible. It had no intelligible basic idea, nor any convincingness, nor any char^ acterisation, nor any beauty. The plot was involved, obscure, and slow in movement. And the invention of illustrative incident was puerile. Indeed the story was merely foolish. I mention this film because it suddenly crystallised my critical notions about the present state of development of the cinema. It constituted a superlative illustration of the fact that while the graphic side of the cinema has been most satisfactorily advancing, the dramatic side has been most unsatisfactorily lagging behind. The creative brain which conceived and executed the graphic side in a manner to win the respect of the artistically educated seemed to possess no critical faculty capable of handling the dramatic side in a way correspondingly adequate. Apparently the leaders of the cinema have not yet grasped the fundamental truth that the most important part of any creative film is the story itself, and that all other parts of the enterprise are merely parts of an effort to tell the story. 29