Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000612 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 #:
000612
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 his films are not, because they do not set out to be, a conuict of two determinations equally portrayed. One main one goes marching on. Pudowkin took the end of St, Petersburg (and, strange as it may seem, from an American story) and made it show through the lives of his people. It was the personal element that started things. Pudowkin's revolutions are seen through his people; Eisenstein's people are only seen through the revolution. They are poured into the mould of revolution, whereas the man seeking work and the woman wondering where the food will come from (Baranowskaja) in St, Petersburg are moulds themselves into which revolution streams, and brims over and destroys the whole mould. So Eisenstein's characters are images in a wav that Pudowkin's rarely are. The lout that knocked down the capitalist and got the woman's house searched and her husband led off is really the hero of St. Petersburg, but the sailor, the one sailor, who was killed in Potemkin is not really the hero. The hero — what Eisenstein takes to be the hero — is visible in the last momentous shot; the crew clustered and cheering over the cruiser. The collective spirit that made their revolt successful. Sailors, not a sailor. Not even one sailor expressing and doing dramatic duty for them all, and not even sailors, but the determination that made them sailors, I mean made them put up with the life and then made them refuse to put up with what was unnecessary in it, in the shape of bad meat (which was a symbol). The last comment is not the flag flying, as in Mutter, but the crew on the ship they have made their own. And let it be remembered that the film opened, dark and unruhig was the day, shots of empty waves and 28