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 #:
000326
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 Hollywood has done it, so has France, and the theatres had it twenty years ago. That is the disappointment. This film is old-fashioned in its tendency, in its thought and its conventions, whereas all Pabst's previous films have been completely modern. It has nothing to say against system where such arrogant conduct is necessary, no new suggestion, no comment. It was in many w^ays an excellent film, and the situation marvellously worked out. But Pabst is a philosopher, and we have, grown to expect some valuable contribution to thought from him. Jeanne Ney had it. Joyless Street was nothing else. But in Abwege the obvious problems arising from just this situation are ignored. It is an artistic trifle. If the husband is the kind of man who turns frivolous but otherwise quite nice people out of his house, when his wife has seen fit to accept them, we need nowadays to be shown that this line of arbitrary conduct is not going to be tolerated, and that no wife of to-day is going to be treated like an irresponsible moron, and that her friends would put such a man quickly in the place that belongs to him. Wo do not wish his silly actions to be allowed to pass as right or virtuous. They are wrong and reactionary, and this is the time to keep on showing it. And a wife who cannot express her independance except in meretricious and vulgar liaisons is also a product of the past. It would have been so much more stimulating and real if she had walked out and taken a job. This may seem unduly harsh, but it is true at bottom, and we cannot in honour to ourselves pass as first rate a film which is so obviously second. The technique . . . but one does not have to speak of Pabst's 74