Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000211 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 #:
000211
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 Last Moment, sl film study in subjectivity, was produced in sympathetic collaboration by Paul Fejos as the director, Otto Matiesen as the actor, and Leon Shamroy as the cameraman — Hungary, Scandinavia, Russia, in a brotherhood of artistry. The picture opens with a figure of a man (Matiesen) in Pierrot costume sinking from sight in the dark night waters of a lake. As his upraised hand disappears with a despairing gesture, a lone bubble comes to the surface of the water. Symbolic of the drowning man's final moment of life, the bubble dissolves into a rapid succession of coherent yet intermingled visions — life's panorama flashing in review before his mind's eye — the vicissitudinous career of a man ambitious to become a great actor, brought to a tragic close by the death of his wife and his subsequent suicide. Forty years compressed into sixty seconds. Five reels of celluloid crowded with a phantasmagoric onrush of events, incidents, tragedies, trivialities, loves, hates, impulses, emotions, thoughts — flashing, fading, dissolving. No uttered line or word. A film of dream-stuff. The picture is one of Hollywood's most ambitious attempts at cinematic psychologic analysis and subjective treatment. None of its stills afford an adequate conception of it, for its values are essentially and peculiarly involved in motion, change, transition. Commercially, the film has won but scant success ; but among the little theatres of the country it is receiving the appreciation it deserves as a signal example of the cinema's capabilities in the realm of impressionism. C. H. 57