Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000353 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 #:
000353
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 What ghastly bathos — man ! These sequences must have been placed in the wrong order. The filmish business of a cave-dweller fighting a bear, wife and child watching in agonized close-ups {Michael Strogoff?)^ makes one sceptical about the whole human race. That meditative monkey ! Producers of this film are men of science, they should never have attempted reconstructions of early days. It comes as a shock to us, no doubt as an immense relief to the Sunday Express, to find that the cave-dwellers wore coy skirts. Scenes of later domestic life, in houses built on poles above the water, are equally untrue. Evolution brings the wing of a bird, the finely sensitive hand of a 'cellist. The next part of the film shows evolution of the earth's creatures paralleled in the human embryo : from the moment when the sperm fertilizes the ovum to the severing of the cord of life by the obstetrician. " Meet?" said our companion, yourself." Possibly?" we whispered, " he is a film director, or a journalist, or a cameraman, or . . ." It is on account of this section of the film, told as it is in dignified yet fascinating manner, that we heartily recommend the picture to schools. Here, however, the censor must have shut his eyes and looked shocked, for the rest of the film curiously resembles Evolution, an educational picture released some years ago. After this section the producers sensationally introduce freaks : a man with webbed feet, a woman with scaled skin, an atavistic throw-back with hairy face. Why look so upset, dear reader, you pay to see them all in the circus ? Although 71