Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000344 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 #:
000344
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 cinema not for additional problems in their already overstocked-with-problems lives, but for relaxation. In other words, entertainment and relaxation are a state of suspended animation. They must be, if thought, which is the most living thing in life, is debarred from them. If entertainment is thoughtless, then it is mindless, and a mindless thing we are apt to imprison. Thus by every law of logic, to be entertained is to reduce oneself to a state of fitness for an infirmary. There is the reduction of the argument they use. And it is no more true actually than saying that the present commercial cinema is intellectual stimulus. Another conclusion is that entertainment constitutes the inefficient aphrodisiac of cabaret scenes, strong men scenes and weak women scenes. But this hardly holds water, since you see what real entertainment is when something becomes a real problem recognisable to all, or a real incident, or a real state of mind or of being. People become alert. Thev come to life. They may have been sitting back three parts inattentive, completely listless. Something vital flashes before them, something thev recognise, and voti can sense the switchover to receptivity : just as if a light had been, so to speak, turned on. I don't think people are entertained any more by the following screen conventions, even though they are inseparable from most of the best films yet made. People are not entertained by the blond heroine, who tastes Strong Drink for the first time, and says Ugh I I She always does. Nowadays a girl either likes or doesn't like strong drink, but she certainly knows all about it. And, in this 6