Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000346 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 #:
000346
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 will that one could visualise in that lifeless and dough-like visage a trace of the glamour, the chiselled purity, the dazzling, almost unearthly beauty that one recognised so acutelv in the very-young figure of the half-starved aristocratic officiars daughter in Joyless Street. Greta Garbo, in a little house dress, an apron and low slippers, sweeping the passage of the improvident home in Joyless Street, remained an aristocrat. Greta Garbo, as the wife of a Russian Court official and the mistress of a man of the world, diademed and in sweeping robes in the Palace of Karenin, was a house-maid at a carnival. Perhaps the example of Greta Garbo is an exaggerated instance, and, I repeat, the young actress herself may have had little sav in the hands of those who make her the devil in tilms where Gilbert is the flesh. Take Brigitte Helm, who is alwa}'s an artist. I have not seen all her lilms, but without question her performance of the blind girl in Jeanne Xey is one of her most striking — a feat that reallv lifted her above the realm of legitimate artists. She is almost an illegitimate " magician. " Brigitte Helm did not look bhnd," I heard repeated of her in Berlin, " she was blind." Isn't that it? G. W. Pabst is almost a magician, his people are "created, not made"? There is, indeed, another side " to everv one of his women, whether it be the impoverished little daughter of post-war A^ienna or one of the extras in an orgy scene, each and everv one is shown as a being ", a creature of consummate life and power and vitality. G. W . Pabst brings out the vital and vivid forces G4