Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000681 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 #:
000681
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 text of a film need not be perfect. Its effect depends much more on its place between image and image than on its literary value. The color film ! It would not give anything and would take much from the artistic possibilities of the cinema. Color is too positive, the objects would be too heavy. The neuter greys of present photography are infinitely more delicate. Chaplin incarnates the dreamer, the unadapted. He is the poor fool who opposes to civilisation, to sentimental complications, to formulas and formal beings, his primitively intelligent and spontaneous instinct. Chaplin is the poet of the humble, of things which one neglects. AsTA Nielsen plays with her soul almost exclusively. Her eyes are remarkably expressive, shine with love, desire, bitterness, with equal delicacy. Asta Nielsen disdains the direct methods of sex appeal ; her body remains virtuously hidden ; her face alone is the tablet whereon is written the thousand intimate thoughts which, turn by turn, traverse her mind. The above random translations will succeed partly in giving* the clue to this witty and wise book which is recommended warmly to all who are able to read in German. There is a kind of Nietschean terseness of philosophy which has the Nietschean gift of making self-evident facts evident for the first time. It collects the most helpful summaries, and has compartments, filed, ticketed and indexed for all its orderly thoughts. . * « ^