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 #:
000515
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 deal fear of the ordeal before her in the operating room. She creeps out. Presently her tears fall on a small plaster ornament. She goes off in a train. At the end of the film the husband and his friend stand in front of the mirror with the ornament and her note, scratching their heads. The amazing quahty of this film was that it presented hfe as it (let us admit it) so often is, and not as most of us try to pretend it should be. Here were human relationships blurred and adjusted, as human Uves always are, to suit surrounding circumstances. People are usually wdse enough not to carry their principles to the point where they cease to become principles and become instead stupidity or destructiveness. That is what this film says. It says there is no morahty except the special morality adaptable to different circumstances, and it goes even further, pointing out that any morality except the moraUty adjusted to governing conditions of one's particular hfe is so much hearsay, not even considered as remotely in existence. Some people might hold up their hands at this film. They might say "But this is impossible." Their indignation would reveal the fact that they reahsed how exactly true, common, and, to be frank, natural, the hves of these people were. It is a pity that we are not hkely to see the fihn as widely as it should be seen, (it has had a great success throughout Germany) if only on account of the fact that it is the most recent and most complete example of the modem Russian method in cinematography. It is an historic fihn, and probably better in many ways than The Mother. You cannot 73