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 #:
000468
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early 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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP him, strange, a rescue from the clouds, the work of a deus ex machina. The sense of a strong psychic release is to be attained only in the case of a sudden ending of a painful to-and-fro between hope and fear. The onlooker must anticipate the turn of affairs without himself being aware of his anticipation. This suddenly seen head of the leader of the guard is to be counted amongst the things that assist his unconscious expectation. Certainly only a few of the millions who have seen Potemkin will have even noted the movement of the head, but upon all it will have worked as powerfully as upon mv friend. The film is thus revealed as a kind of timemicroscope, that is to say, it shows us clearly and unmistakably things that are to be found in life but that ordinarily escape our notice. 2. Mutter, by Pudowkin. Here, too, everything turns upon the effectual preparation of a moment of tension. The son is in prison, the mother hopes to hand him secretly, during the visitors' hour, a scrap of paper which will show him the way to freedom. The two are talking to each other through a grille and the mother's attention is concentrated upon smuggling the paper into her son's hands unnoticed by the authorities. Two officials are present. From one, seated near her at a table, she has nothing to fear. He is fulfilling the duty of all overseers : he is asleep ! But on the other side of her stands with stifflyplanted gun the guard who brought her son to the meetingplace and will take him away again : a yokel with expressionless features who, for lack of something more interesting to 12