Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00047
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:
August 28, 2022
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CLOSE UP falseness is the essential verity and charm of farce, melodrama, and sentimentalism, is not broken as it so easily might be by any intrusion of morals. The sensuality is a little timid, but so is the audience at a burlesque show. With less timidity there might have been the impertinence of real truth and beauty. Besides, the censor has to be placated. On its level, I know of no better made picture than Hula. One other curious point. The note of cruelty attains the greatest success in the movies. I think that there is something in the lives men live that craves cruelty. The late war either gave us all a taste for it, as Lawrence persuades me shatteringly in the mob scene of Kang aroo, or the war did not give enough scope for our natural cruelty, or modern humanitarian civilization does not, or it is a necessary concomitent of our Roman luxury, or it is creeping out with the release of pent up lust unlocked by the breaking of Victorian restraints and the preaching of Freudian philosophy, the return to the healthy beast. Whatever the cause, cruelty along with the other lusts of the flesh has broken the bonds of shame and colors our passionate material progress. I like the beauty that is born of art, the artificiality that is born of intellect, the accomplishment that is under control, the truth that is not distorted by desire. The people want cruelty, Hollywood knows it, the screen is giving it. Look at Lon Chaney, John Barrymore, and Sabbatini. There are lots of other places to find it, but it is an insistent note on the screen. As presented, it is destructive of the beauty of artificiality and the truth of realism so long as our imaginations 31