Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Page scan 000482 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000482
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 .THE WANING OF THE STARS Hollywood's stars are on the wane. Their extravagantly false importance has at last become evident in the light of a sober-minded reckoning. The dawn of a new day — a day of recovered senses emerging from a revelous night of star worship— is fast dimming the glitter of these cinema luminaries and foretokening the end of their all-too-long fantastic sovereignty. For the past decade or more the world's cinema destinies have been ruled by the stars of the screen. The}/ have not only dominated the films, but they have also cast their spell over the whole movie business. Competing for their fickle favors has been one of the chief pursuits of every big studio ; producer bidding against producer with preposterous salary offerings, each of them zealously determined to hitch his picture wagon to a star. The ambition may have been worthy enough, but the stars themselves as an institution have proven signally unworthy. And the producers are at last waking up to the fact. They are realizing that their stars have been running away with them and are chargeable with the smash of many a costly wagon. Instead of proving the beneficent deities they were supposed to be ,the casting up of accounts reveals them as veritable genii of mischief and disaster. 22