Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000112 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000112
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:
July 25, 2024
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CLOSE UP efforts to economize, are becoming steadily less inclined to incur the expense entailed by these geographical excursions. With the use of stage built exteriors of miniature sets, painted backgrounds, double exposures, and trick photography, coupled with the unparalleled variety of landscape within a short radius of Hollywood, there are but few parts of the earth that cannot be readily and realistically duplicated for the screen. In The King of Kings, for example, all of the Palestrinian exteriors were either natural California scener}' or were built on the stages. The impressive Garden of Gethsemane and Calvary were both stage sets, designed by the de Mille art director. * A unique feature of Hollywood's amusement life is the film premiere — the first night's showing of some new picture of special note. It is a feature peculiarly and exclusively Hollywoodian ; a spectacle wdthout its counterpart in any other community of the world. The prices charged on one of these " first nights" range from five to ten dollars a ticket, and the audience consists largely of members of the film colony. The interested public for the most part gets its enjoyment out of the affair by crowding about the brilliantly lighted theatre entrance and gazing upon the movie celebrities as they arrive. Many thousands w^ho would avoid the jam on the streets, remain at home and tune in on the broadcast by the announcer who stands before a mi 76