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 #:
00019
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP pendous it is, stupifying it is — so stupifying that it almost does stupify one into not seeing what an incorrigibly sentimental and softly romantic rendering it is. We are not given the superb sociological document we believe we are given. Judges are again gangsters. Joan is so lovely with her visions all departed from her that you are apt to forget that genius is never quite so at the mercy of mob. Sneering gangsters too would have been quickly placed in the mind of a veteran campaigner. This film ignores history-, except that it uses some of Joan's answers, and has her burnt. Stripped of its peculiarly potent trimmings and technique it is as base in conception as Seventh Heaven, with its whipped innocent, its blowsy drunkard sifter, its catering to the sheer squalid luxury of pity. Dreyer's film is great however because Dreyer does understand grief. He understands beauty and the awfulness of mercy, but he does not seem to understand that accusation is part of daily life, and that casual brutality is not the pantomimic hob-goblinish snarling of debased and elderly monsters. Joan was the victim of law and order, not of hooliganism. Pity at any price is a bad principle. To any who have an historical, political, sociological, or even logical flair, Joan will be a failure. We are tired of seeing the War anyhow, but how insufferable it would be if we saw it tricked out in a romanticism that made it just a sensation to wring our hearts. So with Joan. The attitude toward her feminine incorruptibibity is almost Dickensonian. And if you like such women you deserve to. 9