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 #:
000503
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP and is invited to stay to tea. The villain offers her further hospitality. He entices her into a Chinese cubicle, dopes her, and threatens to seduce her. Yes, there are shots of dancing feet, and hearts ache while feet dance I There is an out and out villain ; Alfred Abel, the devil I You must make no mistake, a man who sells drugs is very, very wicked ; therefore Mr. Abel wears his hair in two mephistophelean horns. Do such wicked men exist ? Really and truly ? The audience goes home feeling very virtuous, or else it laughs and laughs, and laughs. It is a pity that Abel overacts, it is a pity that the scenario is black and white (good and evil, no people), it is a pity that the direction of Meinert is ordinary ; for there are many lovely moments in the picture. Asta Nielsen is so beautiful. She looks into a mirror. She cannot go on with life. The corners of her mouth fall, and you know at once that she must go on doping and doping. Drugs, the craving for them, force her to live — their life. There is no hope, no wa}' out. She falls in a heap on the floor. The Chinese servant glides in. Expressionless face. Just another of Madame Thamara's attacks. She picks up the lifeless body on the floor without love, pity or hatred, and lays it on a couch. The camera shoots along the plane of her face. Her nostrils are distorted by the angle. So ugly, so lost, so beautiful. Or she takes cocaine. Her shiny black hair, cut uncompromisinglv, is brushed into order. She laughs, she smiles. How deeply she has entered into the part. We feel how wonderful it is for her to put life back in those dead features, the death of vears ; not how clever it is of her to simulate an 39