Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Page scan 000496 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 #:
000496
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 not, you see. control his filni. It may be bought, and utihsed to fill out some older picture ; or bits of another picture may be put into it to give it the necessar\' kick, punch, pep and sparkle. So that the sequence you were so careful \Wth may go, the contrasts you built up so carefuUy may vanish. Who will know r \\'e shan't ! We shall only think that the contrasts are crude and that the stor\' jerks. There are so many movies we have wanted to see. mo\'ies in which people we respect have collaborated. \Mien they come, they mean nothins:. Can there be sjeat films ? Well, ca?i there ? The answer is, Xot often. The result is that to stop people cutting what they don't hke. directors placate them by putting in what the}' will. It is the only way. Give the mob its glamorous dancing, make the illegitimate baby die. Even if your business men must have a perfectly equipped office to draw finger-nail plans on a table-cloth, put in a dancing. Some one else will, otherwise. Something \^ill have to m^ake room for it. When this is apphed to the world-market, it is disastrous. Pohtics. of course, enter here. There are several Russian fihns. waiting in London, bur it is not advisable to shew them yet, But apart from pohtics, there is national temperament. Gennan films are slow. They B?,Mw:n's ^rave from the Enghsh version of Tr.c 5:::.<':';;: P'.^ I: was too Germanic . But why shouldi:'t Ger:::^-.:: fil:::s :e Germanic ? And why should they be. as they are trying to be. An:er::.i:: ? And why should America turn out long hea\y pictures 54