Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000145 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 #:
000145
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
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 St. Petersburg is not greater than Potemkin. I am sure it is as great, but not greater. Pudowkin is apt to err in presenting his ruling classes as caricatures. Their indifference and brutahty is just a Httle apt to be over-stressed. Their position, naturally, was as often due to ignorance as great as the people they oppressed. I am not saying that Lebedefl' was in any way overdrawn, nor the cheering crowds urging their countrymen to light, while the whole of St. Petersburg decked in flags and flower garlands was reminiscent of a Roman festival. Women waving, and jov evervwhere, we can all remember, was how war was greeted by many. But the impression, and this conveys exactly what I mean, of oppression was just as surely conveyed by Eisenstein in Ten Days by adroit photographs of gaudy chandeliers, statues, decor, gigantic, over-ornate trapping of the Winter Palace, contrasted with the pitiful misery of the people. This subtlety seemed to me very dignified and very fine. I know how many directors would have, or could have, visualised nothing but bare baccantes and a hiccoughing sovereign to express their meaning. This may seem, but is not actuallv deviating from my account of what is happening in Berlin at the moment. These two films are still being much discussed, and will be for years to come. Close Up will have much to say of them from time to time. The cutting out of Trotsky from Ten Days, an act of censorship, is as inexplicable as most of the inhibitions for which that department is universally famous, especially since we have Lenin. Presumably we are supposed to realise that Trotsky figured in the history of these days, and to have every reference to him deleted leaves a gap. It is a pity that political 7