Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Page scan 000627 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 #:
000627
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 cutting means thoughtful continuity, and English continuity is slovenly to say the least. An artist told me a typical tale of costly oversights. The first day's take on the ยป Aquitania" set, for Champagne was spoilt because the wind was forgotten. It was supplied on the second day by an aeroplane propellor, but nobody remembered to soak the rope-ladder presumably drawn up over the side of the ship. Three days' work for avoidable slips. Godfrey Winn in Blighty goes upstairs to his bedroom and night changes to day, unless it was a terrifically violent moon that night A certain British studio solved the continuity question a few years ago in rather a novel manner. In between productions the director posed his star in front of a black background for every emotion in the spectrum of the commercial scenario. He would take hundreds of feet of close-ups and keep it in stock. Then when the continuity failed, when the heroine left a room carrying an umbrella and emerged to the street with a walking stick, the wily director would divert the attention of the public by cutting in a close-up. The reels would be lifted down from the shelf and an appropriate closeup selected. She is laughing in the long shot, then here is a smiling close-up ! Yes, for quite a long time we must go on saying and saying* OSWELL BlAKESTON.