Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000144 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 #:
000144
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 I am interested, too, to hear that nearlv everybody here says The End of St. Petersburg is much better than Ten Days That Stunned the World. 1 will not dispute this, being but one among* critics as good and better than myself, but, having seen the two, I think there is little to choose between them. Here thev saw Si. Petersburg first, and naturally accepted it as the masterpiece it is. I myself saw Ten Days first, and perhaps that has something to do with my feeling that the scenes of the revolt were more dynamic, more stark, more vivid than in St. Petersburg, though I am sure that nothing could be greater or more terrible than the war scenes in the latter, blending and commenting on civil life in St. Petersburg itself. Ten Days, they say, is a document — meaning news reel. So, if we are to believe it, is St. Petersburg. The personal element simply concentrates attention and sympathy on the individual. This is excellent, and adds great power to the lilm. But Ayhat of the personal element in Ten Days? What of Lenin and his terribly effective entrance and his wild gesticulations? What of the woman whose body lies on the great bridge, which, opening slowly, lifts her streaming hair, and takes with it a dead horse harnessed to its cab, with the horse dangling white and stark over the water, and the cab balancing its weight on the other side? This moment, with the bridge rising, and the horse rising higher and higher in the air, hanging more and more absurdly from incredible height, until the strain is too great and cab crashes down the slope to the road and the horse plunges into the water, is one of sheerest personal terror, and only to be compared with the toppling of the upright pram down the steps in Potemkin. I want to register my opinion because, if I am any judge, 6