Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000348 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 #:
000348
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 cannot realise, how a thing " created, not made must forever take precedence to the most technically perfected image. I know that the image of the Maid of Orleans in the Dreyer conception is technically flawless. But to me (and not a few others) the Jeanne D^Arc is (I repeat it) made^ the Image is carved and constructed. Imagine Brigitte Helm in this role and directed by Pabst . . . we scarcely dare imagine such a thing. It w^ere out of place to speak seriously of mediums and mediumistic trances . . . but there are times when art so far transcends itself that we are forced into another set of symbols. The Jeanne D'Arc of Dreyer is art carried to its highest — wood-carving, if you will, bronze or even mediaeval silver, but it remains art as carvings on a cathedral. The life-like Image of a saint set at dusk in a cathedral causes us to cry " magnificent the opening of the violets in our garden touches us but causes no astonishment. We take it so for granted. I have not taken part in the conversation that has been going on. I have not even been listening. (You will remember we are seated in a warm corner of a Berlin restaurant just before Christmas.) There is some little stir and probably we must be going. I must say just one thing. Mr. Pabst, I must ask you one thing — " He turned courteously from weightier matter — about, if you don't mind, Joyless Street,'' I had seen a still of a dead body, a very beautiful still of the figure of the mundane lady who, you will recall, is killed in the house she went to with her lover. I wanted to know about that body of Madame . . . I was wondering about it." :\Ir. Pabst did not wait for me to explain fully, he 66