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 #:
00056
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 the feet take ? The light, the rather-too-much hght, doesn't belong here. The light says there should be no light in this street. It is put there, by lamplighter or cameraman (I have to admit, more probably by cameraman) to show light does not belong here. The street knows it, and we know it. So this street, feet and feet, is, besides being ver}^ vividly itself, something also we know. Something of us in terms of wall and mud and a girl in a too-short skirt (a French girl killed herself once because they wouldn't give her a licence, she was too young) made visible by light that doesn't belong. The feet have been followed by other feet. Girl's feet followed by man's upstairs, into a room. Fight, rush to window scream. x\nd here is another room, with Asta Nielsen. We know her, too. We know the kind of film this will be. We can sit back. Or rather, don't sit back, sit up. Asta Nielsen in a frightening tight bodice that catches the light as she raises her arms. Asta Nielsen making the light belong. She is raising her arms to do her hair, and that means to her pulling it apart at the roots, dipping a tooth-brush in dye. A room leading off, with a girl, fluffy and obvious, we know her too. The fight opposite goes on. The fluffy girl hears the scream, and flies in to Nielsen, w^ho smiles one of those dreadful smiles, short and wise, with what shouldn't be known so absolutety. When 5^ou have lived here longer she says, dipping the toothbrush, you will get used to that. The crowd is splitting, those earty feet will only dangle now. Into the picture sUdes Homolka, giving the word of "police**. He is Nielsen's man. She is a little bored with him. Why will he be proprietary ? If 32