Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 00065 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 #:
00065
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
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CLOSE UP and exhausted at the protractions, stands by her husband's side, " doing her bit going on with her smile, and quick, furtive glances. This is all wonderfully achieved. It is not the direct thing that is emphasised. Pudovkin uses more the undercurrents. The amiable faces are all watching. The commander's wife becomes a classic symbol — a symbol shown-up. Her silly " good-breeding " is the thing she clings to, sensing the hostility and the exotic oppositeness of what is going on around her. Messages come from the war zone. They are delivered with smiles and in whispers while the ceremony is going on. They are whispered to the commander and both he and his wife smile. Everybodv smiles. His adjutant goes out, and Mongolian faces stare round, and there is slight nudging among ihe Mongolians. The dance scenes which follow — authentically filmed for the first time, and for this reason alone of absorbing interest, do undoubtedly, however, unbalance the composition. To talk this way, as I have stated in my editorial, is quite wrong and misleading unless it is carefully explained what is meant. And what is meant here is that the dances took up too much time and diverted attention from the story. A useful parenthesis, which overstepped its legitimate limit. Alone and for itself alone this sequence was very fine, full of movement and mysticism and speeding up ; capturing the orderlv abandon and the crescendo of the dance. The accompaniment of cymbals certainly needed no sound synchronisation. The rhythm of the cymbals here can be compared only to the now famous machine-gun sequence of Ten Days. So one goes, peeping between the mesh where it is loose, and bit by bit 48