Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000680 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 #:
000680
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 much what their action consists of as the manner in which it is conducted which matters and brings warmth and life to the film. The screen actor should be above all a character and if one is surprised now and then to see almost exclusively beautiful faces on the screen, it is that physiognomony is part of the very technique of films, and beauty, in the words of Kant, is the symbol of good. The close-up is the art of accentuation of the film. Here the objects do not play the part of decoration, but create a thought, a train of definite ideas. Thus machines have become the symbol of a civilisation heedless of the murders it provokes. Animals brmg to the screen the most completely successful realism ; children are almost as agreeable to see for the same reason. Rhythm, which is the art of giving nuance to the movement of images, is to the film what style is to the writer. Time perspective, the passing of hours, is assured by the rhythm of the scene, the space into which it fits, its clearness. The more the intermediate scenes, interspaced in main action, are separated from the circumstances evoked, from the scene chosen, the more illusion one has of the lapse of time. The length of a scene does not offer only rhythmic possibility but permits equally the creation of a special state of mind in the spectator. It is necessary to give to each image its space of time. One metre too much induces ennui ; one too liltle is likely to take away the portent of a whole scene. 88