Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 00043 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00043
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:
June 20, 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 Gish, of course, knows it can't go on much longer, she is, after all, married to the man, and the man is damned if he sees why it should go on much longer, since she is, after all, married to him, and what is marriage for? He took her in a mug of cocoa when she arrived. The cup lies on his floor. The hopes he had, the kindness he was prepared to pay her. Here, drink this, I made it myself. The cup lies on the floor. Of course, he kicks it. The alternating rhythms on the still floor are broken. The act follows the mental decision, and the kicking of the cup is the visual expression of the decision and preparation for what he has decided. He goes into her room, through a door, onto another set of boards. We scarcely notice that he has left his room, because the continuity of the action has been set up in our minds by the boards. The feet meet, Gish's draw back. Well, how important the floor has been. I mentioned the intimacy of Seastrom in home scenes. The birth of the calf was not good in The Tower of Lies, but in this newer film, Gish is at work with the people she lives with, and the woman is ripping a carcass. Everyday stuff. But watch the way Gish draws her skirts as she passes the carcass to fetch an iron. You find that for the first time in weeks at a London cinema, you have a state of mind pure before you. Gish, of course, moves beautifully, even under Fred Niblo's direction in The Enemy, and Seastrom, of course, understands motion and the waves of motion, notice the way the dance stopped, and the floor emptied and the people sw^ept down to the cellar in The Wind, while one or two waited on the empty floor busy barricading the door and the typhoon hung over the town outside — to return, more or less literally, to the 21