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 #:
000192
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 basis of much that enters into tne craft of picture making and gives the screen its distinctive character and import. Judged by his pictures, De Mille's rank as a director must be left to individual appraisement, as must that of any other director. Cinema standards are still too indefinite, and popular tastes too varied, to permit of any acceptable common ground for comparison. Relative values of accomplishment can only be intelligently determined in historical perspective, and the perspective of screen history is yet too short for such determination. The only practical criterion at present possible is that of success ; and according to this, as measured in fame and fortune, together with a record of fifteen fruitful years without a failure, the rank of first place among cinema directors belongs unquestionably to Cecil de Mille. The making of pictures is to him primarily what the writing of a book is to the novelist or the building of a bridge to an engineer — the joy of creative w^ork. And its unparalleled diversity of scope, together with its never-ending problems and possibilities, has its especial appeal to a man of De Mille's temperament and serves as a constant challenge to his energies and resourcefulness. Picture making embraces not only all fields of creative art, but it calls also for the balancing elements of business sagacity, for the skill of generalship, and for the experienced ability of the showman. And in each of these practical respects De Mille is as much the adept as he is in the realm of the imagination. Moreover, he has not concerned himself with any attempted educating of the masses. He has left that for those afflicted with the missionary spirit. He realises, in agreement with 46