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 #:
000188
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 much discouragement — a gloomy trick which fate now and again employs for the making of brilliant history. This was fifteen years ago. The two young men whom niggardly fortune was that day prompting to seek a new outlet for their ambitions were Jesse Lasky and Cecil de Mille. They had heard of a little place in Southern California called Hollywood, where conditions were reported as ideal for making motion pictures. They would pool their experiences and their talents and what little capital they had between them, go out to the Coast, and try their luck with this pioneer enterprise. It was a bold undertaking ; w^ith a touch, too, of defiance and rebellion in it. Especially for De Mille, the man of the stage, and steeped in the atmosphere of its classic traditions. For the cinema then was outside the pale of legitimacy. An Ishmaelite, unworthy of welcome or recognition. Crude, cheap, trivial, born of a toy, and without pedigree, it had no place among the chosen. But with his gift of vision De Mille foresaw the possibilities of this little waif of the amusement world. Its present chief handicap was lack of opportunity. He saw in it a new form of dramatic art, as yet wholly uncertain of itself and groping for adequate expression. He would bring to it the teachings and experiences of his own historic profession ; invest it with definition, life, beauty, meaning; endow it with the technique of the theatre ; substitute its awkward presentations with genuine drama translated from the stage. And so the modern photoplay was conceived, and a few months later had its birth in Hollyw^ood with the production of The Squaw Man. 42