Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000256
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:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP an old newsreel into a film, so generally employed in warsequences. These portions are certainly authentic, but since they do not participate in the quality of light or the temper of the light arrangements, they are intrusive and unreal. The reality of the established Hght-unity has been contradicted.^ Of course, it is possible to incorporate different lightquahties — a variety of tones and pitches — into a single film. It is possible to incorporate, and the incorporation is the proof. But a film must be light-planned to achieve such incorporation and the alternations must be intervalled and timed in duration in the total rhythm of the picture. I have not seen many films that succedeed in doing this. Feyder's Therese Raquin was a contradiction — very delicate and to most eyes imperceptible perhaps — between the construction of tw^o lightings not alternated nor balanced in the intention of a single organization : German studio lighting and the usual French interior light. In France, it is worth noting that unities of lighting are most often achieved by men who are originally painters : Alberto Cavalcanti and Man Ray.^ No one, so far as I am aware, has yet dwelt upon the unity of the absolute film. I shall here only record a few indications. The kev to the unitv of the absolute film is ^Or refer to Epstein's Six and a half x Eleven, The inconsistencies of lighting seriously disturb the continuity of pattern and flow. Bad studio equipment may have produced this. 2x'\nother phase of light as unity is the relation of the lighting to the nature of the film. I include in the matter of light the tone of the raw-stock too. Frequently the use of a brown stock is antipathetic to the mood of the film. But in Clair's The Italian Straw Hat the stock provides just the period color-tone which coincides with the entire attitude of the film. 1T2