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 #:
000155
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 a shorter sequence in an estaminet set, a couple of street episodes, and some day and night shots in the trenches at Sandhurst ; all of them might have easily been taken in France or at Ufa. In fact the extras employed in several of the French scenes had to be Englishmen ! Those who have seen the sequences of Verdun taken abroad say that they contain some of the most realistic and effective reconstructions that have ever been introduced into a war film. This is quite likely, but I fear that everything in the film is sure to be tinged with that extraordinary French trait — undue stress on insignificant detail. That expresses what I want to say very badly, really it does not express it at all because the detail is never insignificant, only comparatively so ; but the way in which they waste all their energy on a detail and overlook or ignore the glaring solecisms is amusing or pathetic, I am not sure which. Let me give you an example from the scenes taken at Sandhurst on a pouring wet day, a day on which I sympathized with Monsieur Prejean, crawling about with his face in the mud for hundreds of feet of film, more heartily than did with many heroes of more formidable exploits on the battlefield. There was some gorse growing by the edge of the trenches. Naturally it must be removed. One little bit was forgotten. Assistants waved their hands ; everyone went on their knees ; there was difficulty in locating it ; while those who saw it insisted on bawling diffuse directions. Commotion and disorganization for several minutes. Then a piece of barbed wire. It *9