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 #:
000191
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 When I sent the picture on to the sales department I received a most amazing telegram from the then head of the department, saying, " Have you gone mad? Do you expect us. to be able to sell a picture for full price when you show only half of the man?" And the exhibitor, in his turn, offered the same protest — that the picture was no good because we showed only half of the man. So the sales department wired me again, " We don't know what to do; we can't sell the picture." ^For a moment I was in despair. But, as I have already told vou, it is the duty of a director to meet all emergencies. In this instance Allah was good to me and suggested the phrase " Rembrandt lighting." So I telegraphed the New York office : " If you fellows don't know Rem^brandt lighting when you see it, don't blame me." The sales department, greatly impressed, exclaimed, Rembrandt lightingi What a sales argumenti " On the strength of that they took the picture out and charged the exhibitor twice as much for it — because it had Rembrandt lighting. And that is the origin of the present-day use of artificial lighting. But while De Mille thus drew upon his experiences with the theatre for many of the teclinical innovations in picture making, he came in time to reahse the limitations of stage technique in this new field. And while he was the first to give dramatic dignity to the screen by replacing its paltry, incoherent stories with plays taken from the stage, he soon learned, also, that the screen demanded its own stories and its own manner of presenting them. Accordingly, while retaining all that was adaptable from the stage, he developed the art of photodramaturgy within its specialised field and in accordance with its individual requirements. His experiments with the close-up, with color, with lighting, with camera effects, with stage settings, with various mechanical and optical devices, together with his many original ideas in scenario construction, to-day constitute the 45