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 #:
000285
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 again the son tries to establish a friendly relationship which again his father rejects. There is something fine in the old man's adherence to his beliefs, in his loyalty to his departed masters. He loves his son, and both know it, and the son respects his father, even though he is opposing him in beliefs that are dear to him. At morning the Bolsheviks depart, and their place is taken by pursuing military. For these people the old man brings out linen and table ware. The son of his masters emerges. Fear having left him he re-establishes himself with cocksure, precocious manner. The old man's son has been followed by him to the cottage where he lives with his wife. It is now easy for him to appear a hero. He has already torn up the son's letters, and the pitiful fragments have been spread by the old man on the bed, assembled but unjoined. Now the security of equals induces him to go further. He calls up the old man. This is his triumph, his statement of being. He strikes him forcefully on the head, calling him traitor. The dazed and astounded old man hears him calling for men to go with him and rout out the Bolshevik son. In course of time he appears bound, and hustled. Again father and son stand face to face. The old man blindly implores mercy from the boy whose triumph makes mercy an impossibility. At nightfall on the second day, the broken figure of the old man is grovelling in the coppice. He has taken the place of the dog, which has vanished. Two naked feet swing above his head. Beside him is the body of the pup. Presently intolerable grief is replaced by a sudden wild triumph. Again men are asleep indoors, and with them the boy smiling in sleep as he had smiled gratitude the night 41