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 #:
000585
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 brought back to Hollywood (that is, Culver City, to be specific). The chief purpose of this expensive trip to Rome had been to film the chariot race in the great circus described in the novel. The reason for returning without having accomplished this purpose may have been the discovery on somebody's part that this circus was located in Antioch. Perhaps the oversight had been due to the fact that the civilized world in the time of Christ was commonly referred to as Rome, and as Hollywood producers are too busy creating history themselves to be mindful of the work of others in this field, they may innocently have assumed that the scenes of Ben-Hur were laid in the only Rome with which they were acquainted. At any rate, that is where they at first thought it proper to film the picture, notwithstanding that no single incident in the story is laid in the city of Rome. By the time they changed their minds and brought the company back, a cost of two or three millions had been charged against the picture, with little or nothing to show for it. The greater part of the Roman film was discarded, and the piece de resistance of the picture, the Antioch circus, was built in Culver City at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the great chariot race put on there, with seventyfive thousand citizens of Los Angeles playing the part of holiday onlookers, each being provided gratis with appropriate costume and make-up. And this having been successfully accomplished on home territory, the picture was subsequently completed in and around the studio. Four million dollars is the advertised cost of Ben-Hur. 411