Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 000491 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 #:
000491
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 woman's hand as in The Silver Lining. That contributes nothing and it breaks up a great deal. One did not see the actual murder in Vaudeville. The darkening bowl of w^ater was sufficient, it was imaginative. One does not want, perhaps, to see men killed as they are killed in war (but one does want the spirit of war, not the spirit of war after war). One does not want more sex, more vice : and there are plenty of ways of being thoroughly nasty and evading the censor. But often there are no ways of producing a fine work and passing all the censors, all the httle men who snip and shoe. I am not referring to the cutting that is done before a film is shown. That may be necessary, though you cannot get speed into a slow film merely by shortening it (look at A Glass of Water) and reducing length may, after a certain point, only create new faults — loss of balance, of rhythm, of continuity. But I do think that foreign distributors and small-town renters are too enthusiastic with their nice big scissors. Pabst's Secrets of the Soul was originally, I am told, a good film. So good that the analysts didn't hke it. As shown in England it was so childish that the analysts wouldn't acknowledge it. But if we don't know this we think Pabst has made a stupid film. O yes (we say), Pabst ! He's made some good films, but Secrets of the Soul, now. Very odd wasn't it ? Perhaps the others were flukes, do you think ?... After all, how are we to judge ? We see what we are given and we are given what is thought good for us. Certain things are good and certain things are bad. It was admitted that if the apphcation for performance had 49