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 #:
000493
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 Dust, and dust is dirt. So the ways to Health and Beauty are bhnd ways to us, though every dirty comedy has bathing belles and mannequin shows put in solely for sex appeal ; and we fill our programmes, our papers and our shop-windows with illustrations of ladies in corsets and in studied neghges that none but the most successful courtesan would aspire to. It is better to think of courtesans (successful ones) as we look at a paper than to think of beauty (I apologise) as we watch the screen. Better to dream about Ninon than look at Helen. Perhaps it is. But we ought to be left to judge for ourselves. Meanwhile, those who want vulgarity and real indecency are allowed to revel in the seductive swathings of Helen in the film version of Mr. Esrkine's book. Because the garments (with "It" written all over them) are there, it is all right. Then there is that peculiarly British institution which, being British, I must call a cloak-room. It is natural that this usual office should appear quite often in hotel corridors : the traveUing habit of my race have seen to that. So it is not more or less inevitable that a shot of a hotel corridor in a fiLni should now and again contain a door with the welcome but oh, so embarrassing, words ? After aU, we give our little girls replicas for their dolls' houses. We buy them, at Hamleys' and then pretend they do not exist on the films. That door will be deleted from two films I saw in Berhn when they come to England. They are "unnecessary". Now what is unnecessary is that tourists should be able to say little else but "Ou est le W. C. ?", when that is the first sign or greeting they give, and then insist in stories being altered, doors dele 51