Close-Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Record Details:

Title:
Close-Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00018
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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 king toward a means to have good films shown. It is their views we want, and their needs we desire to fill. If our motives were in the least meretricious we would need to appear aloof and Olympian. As it is we want to bring all groups together, and make them a unit, since massed strength is. . . well, we all know about the need for massed strength. And, lest I be accused of tooting my own trumpet (which I never could see was a. fault) think only how much more I might have tooted it if this had been an advertisment page instead of an editorial ! With all its liberality, however. Close Up desires officially to state that it was in no way responsible for the development of the "talkie". This monstrosity is descending full speed upon us and I expect that most of us will be driven to the wayside movie house. Dolores Costello in Tenderloin is surely enough in itself without Dolores' voice honking mechanically through a loud speaker. Bad enough to have one's cinematic sense of criticism laid to waste, but when literary judgment too is called upon to judge such stuff the air really does become sulphurous. Let Londoners thank God for Mr. Ogilvie, whose views on the cinema you may read about in this issue. And what about the universal language of the screen ? However^ do not let us forget that we are liberal minded. I have remembered it with Dreyer's Jeanne d'Arc, and feel justified to state, in view of the article by H. D. that although this is going to be hailed as the masterpiece of the screen, and the epic achievement of all time, I don't think it is, and advise readers to be wary in their criticism of it. Great it is, stu 8