Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000509 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 #:
000509
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 The boat is shipwrecked. The man and the girl are washed ashore. The girl (primitive) takes the initiative. She finds a disused hut, which is always there to be found by the shipwrecked. She lights a fire, and leaves the man while she goes out into the waves to look for any of her comrades who may be struggling near the rocks. The man develops fever. For weeks the girl nurses him. The love story, as it is told by the second half of the film, is overwhelming. The first half suffers from frequent use of iris, which the cameraman must fortunately have lost. It is difficult to describe this part of the film. Here is a room. People live in it and love in it. It is not the kind of film in which people do little polished things so that they can be shown in close-up. The man wearies. " Shall I stop in this hole all my life?" The girl glances round the hut with frightened eyes. Hole? It is, for her, home. His cigarettes are gone, there is a little loose tobacco but no paper or pipe. The girl fumbles in her bodice and hands him her poem. He rolls a cigarette, and gazes moodily into the fire. Dreams, smoke. The whole film is weighed with this rather heavy symbolism, which manages, on the screen, to be convincing. Whirr of an aeroplane propeller. Shot from the aeroplane of a tinv speck. Waving arms. Gone. The man bursts into tears, the girl forces him to kiss her. Quarrels and reconciliations. A sail. This time their signals are seen. The girl, too, is excited. She does not realize. Suddenly she sees that he has become white " again, that she has no part in his 45