Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000609 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 #:
000609
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

CLOSE UP visually reached also by repetition of design. This is how Eisenstein works. He brings out his drama by composition. He relies on composition to heighten (the word I have used) his drama. Pudowkin, once again, does not rely on composition so much. Plenty of scenes in the two films I considered are significant more by being complementary than pictorial in composition. But they suffice supremely, because his care is with subconscious imagery and that is his appeal. The picture he forms in our minds, not what he presents separately to our eyes. I know that one can cite at once several scenes seeming to disprove this. The scene I wrote about in St, Petersburg, of the figures crawling across the square, seen from above, and in Mutter the tenseness of the about-to-be strike is doubled by that particular view of the gates, the men and the group. But Pudowkin knows when to abandon his general plan (as does the other) in order to get the effect it would not yield in some particular case. If he is not always different from Eisenstein, let it be remembered there is no reason why he should be. There is a recognisable quality in all Russian pictures, and a recognition of pictorial value is one of them. Eisenstein has it so strongly that he does without any but dramatic imagery, and that is brought about mainly by the success of his compositions, which seem to make something symbolical. When we consider Eisenstein we are aware of something different. There is one curious fact, that the symbols that leap to mind are never people, always objects. The ship thrusting out in Potemkin (it was reproduced in Close Up for March) and the crowd streaming over and under a bridge in double movement; the tables swinging, the 25