Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Page scan 000136 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000136
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 Austrians go white and leave the theatre while Americans are merely sceptical, sensing rightly that this American Tragedy has taught them nothing of Austria, nor for that matter of America. When Pabst, an Austrian, opens your eves to Vienna broken by war and war's end, you understand so much more not only about Vienna but about casual villainy in general and much about humanitarianism. It makes you aware of Austria. And — this is important — Austria as a nation. Its story in evoking sympathy, wakes sympathy for Austria as Austria and not as something badly imitating you. It is the same when ^Margaret ]Mann sends four Tyrolean, country boys to war. What is her " Universal Message " of motherhood (what was Poirier's) but her director's ability to make her look sentimentallv forsaken, waving her overornate lads through over-ornate studio streets to studio war? You don't sympathise with Russia, you have no sense of international understanding, when John Barrymore postures m a Russian story with impeccable, special, ever-softening lens to gain him sex-appeal. Let one fine, honest voice — say Eisenstein's — tell you about Russia, and supposing you are man enough not to scramble with your stocking of savings to bury in the garden ; that is to say, if you haven't got that kind of mind, you \yil\ understand that none of the v\-orld has benefited by the silly tales-told-out-of-school fired competitionally from miles of newspapers and millions of mouths through tw^elve years of unconscious (for that is what it amounts to) confession. What does friend Borzage get from his attempt to put Italy on the International map? .... One of the all too few bright moments of the Mussolini campus — the storming of projection 86