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 #:
000382
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 ships — are symbolical because of the circumstances in which they find themselves. They are drama heightened to imagery, not imagery that heightens to drama. And these are to be found in Pudowkin, too. There is that girl (herself a symbol) taking the men's coats, there is the very angle from which the factory gate is shot, there are Baranowskaja's potatoes in St. Petersburg. All these are dramatic rather than psychological, and it is psychological imagery that is chiefly Pudowkin's. There is a great difference between the wrecking of the statue in Ten Days and the sinister shots of the guns decked with cruel, feminine flowers that is Pudowkin's comment on others' comment on war, in St. Petersburg. In that same film, when the two come looking for work, in the town, they come to (I believe the Palace of Justice, but it does not matter) a big aweing pillared building. This sequence is amazing. It shows how even old tricks can be given their right use at last. It shows that last, among other things, many other things. This is what happens. They reach it. Rows of pillars. Which dissolve into one. One vast pillar, then its vaster base. They, we, the brain of all of us, travel up to the figure at the top. Then, quickly cutting, we are watching them from the top, seeing them as what the figure personifies sees them, small creatures crawling about among tall buildings, hopelessly unimportant, but, by their failure to fit in, disturbing. Think what this means. Instead of insisting on quantity of pillars, as others would do, Pudowkin stresses the quality of PILLAR. Then, by a swift transition, having got in our minds what is in theirs, he shows how their minds affect that of justice. By camera angle and cutting. It is needless at this date to say that half the magic of his 36