Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000483 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 #:
000483
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 o-entleman into a most embarrassino' situation bv tlie sudden and unexpected return of the two prim virgins. I thought it was funnier than anything" I had yet seen at my favorite nickelodeon. But apparently it was not so good as my first effort. Perhaps I suffered under the handicap of not being a plumber or something. At anv rate, I was not only obliged to submit it to four companies before landing it, with Pathe Freres, but, also, I got onlv eight dollars for it. Nothing daimted, however, I continued to dallv with this lowborn pastime, selling funnv stories first to one companv and then another ; egged on perhaps bv a vague prescience that the movies were destined to amount to something and by a sneaking conceit that mv contributions might prove a Nmall help toward that end. As film productions these early contributions of mine were all anonvmous, of course. Nobody in those days, from director down, got any screen credit — if credit is the right word to use — so that I felt perfectly safe in indulging in this then unseemlv btisiness. After having qualified as a split-reel comedy scenarist, I tried my hand at a drama, and had the good fortune to sell it at the top price of fifteen dollars to D. W. Grifiith, then the presiding genius of Biograph. At that time, however, he was known as Lawrence Grifiith. He was an actor bv profession, with a burning ambition to become a dramatist ; and so, forced by temporary financial reverses to direct pictures for a living, he was hiding his identity under an assumed name. He could not afford to jeopardize his legitimate career. I have forgotten the name of my Biograph story. It contained, if I remember correctly, about forty-five scenes; enough for a maximum-length film, about nine hundred or a 19