Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000286 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 #:
000286
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 before. Content in his belief in right. The old man watches him. Soon small flames lick the backs of old dry books, of curtains. Smoke wakes the men. Doors and windows are barred. The second day and the second night pass in the blazing of a vast funeral pyre. The old man hurrying away has the majestic pride and gorgeousness of an avenging angel. Dawn of the third day is wet and grey over a winding road, and over flat, wet fields. Face downward in the road is the solitary dead figure of the old man. This is the story of Two Days, tragic beyond endurance, yet by pity and truth not destructive, but rather an inspiration. Its intolerable strength is in its consistency, and the cumulative building of inevitable incident, leading through tragedy to super tragedy. The dawn, and day and night of each day, cheerless, threatening, irrevocable is made to be felt as actual weight of reality. The small personal conflicts, understandings, motives emerge starkly against the dark background. Everything goes to its limit. With a fractionary difference the suitcase falling on the pup might have been almost slapstick. Here it was so inevitable that actual shock of horror came with it. The situation of Revolution and its devastation, of the needs and justification of both sides and the influence of Revolution falling suddenly upon a large country mansion gave an absorbing situation. For the situation was built on reality, and not in any dramatic convention, where revolutionaries, whether Russian, French or Balkan, are shown as sweeping down on everything and leaving only fire and havoc in their wake. How the personal element functioned through the working out of impersonal aims was marvellously shown, 42