Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

Page scan 000561 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 #:
000561
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 hilarious an epitome. Yet from the point of view of Mr. Asquith's rules, many of those angles were justified. Only, the literal American film had no mentality for those nonliteral angles, and the justifications of a moment's pscychology, drama and pictorial pattern could not surmount the terrific gainsaying of the integral film. Recently, however, there have appeared several instances of a more pertinent incorporation of the angle in the American film, always in association with another and inclusive treatment. In Clarence Brown's Flesh and the Devil, the angle is used in a decidedly non-American structure of setting and lighting, the first American instance, and only American instance I know of, where the environment envelops the characters : a pattern Swedish-German. The angles are never extreme and work into the patterned lines as part of the pattern. They are not planned in the method of Variety, where they determine the pattern, and all else submits to them. In Irving Cumming's film. Dressed to Kill, the angle is of the short-range view, a trifle under the characters, in front of them. It suits the entire muscular impact of the film, which qualifies it as an American device, since the American film is one of muscular impact. The angle is justified always less by its point of origin in the camera than by the image at the other terminal. It is good to note that Mr. Asquith sees that the unit is paramount, even though his own film Underground, is replete with momentary reproaches not called for by the totality — in fact. Underground is hardly a film of a sustained unity. One director has always been aware that his form does not admit 29