Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000349 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 #:
000349
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 As we know, the fundamental (and only) means, by which cinematography has been able to attain such a high degree of effectiveness, is the mounting (or cutting). The improvement of the mounting, as the principal means for producing an effect, \vas the undisputed axiom on which was based the development of cinematography all over the world. The world-wide success of Soviet films was largely due to a number of mounting-devices, which they were the first to discover and develop. 1. Therefore, for the further development of cinematography, the only important factors are those calculated to reinforce and develop these mounting-contrivances for producing an effect on the spectator. Flxamining each new discovery from this point of view% it is easy to demonstrate the trivial significance of coloured and stereoscopic cinematography, as compared with the huge significance of sound, 2. The sound film is a two-edged invention, and it is most probable that it will be utilised along the line of least resistance, that is to say, the line of satisfying simple curiosity. In the first place, there will be the commercial exploitation of the most saleable goods, i.e., of speaking films — of those in which the record of the sound will coincide in the most exact and realistic manner with the movement on the screen, and will convey the illusion of people speaking, of the sound of objects and so on. This first period of sensations will not prejudice the development of the new art, but there will be a terrible second period, w^hich will come with the fading of the first realisation 11