Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000174 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 #:
000174
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 THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF SOUND By Wilbur Needham Those who listen with delight when the heroine actually shouts Oh God! Not that! Anything but that!*' will have no interest in this sketch. And those who hope, like the three Warner brothers, to make a fortune out of canned noise, will be ready for a major crime if they chance upon this. Let all such be warned : there will be no hope offered here for the vitaphone " — indeed, this is not even a discussion of sound devices, except as a prelude to consideration of the photography of sound. Possibly for that larger public without which American pictures cannot survive financially, motion pictures accompanied by metallic gasps and mechanical shrieks will monopolize the film theatre of the future. Possibly, I say, because by this costly addition to the picture, the movie magnates are actually narrowing their market to Englishspeaking races, destroying the universal language of the screen — unless they are willing always to make the vitaphone and the photoplay records separately, a method that will prove of staggering expense. And, as my friend Barnet Braverman points out, they are driving away many half dollars brought to the theatre by unhappy people who come to the films for 28