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| Close Up (magazine) | |
|---|---|
| Title | Close Up |
| Category | Film magazine |
| Firstdate | 1927 |
| Finaldate | 1933 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Close Up (magazine) was a British film magazine published between 1927 and 1933 that played a central role in articulating modernist film theory and championing international cinema. Founded in London, the magazine became associated with aesthetic debates involving montage, realism, and the cinematic avant-garde while engaging figures and institutions across Europe and the United States. Close Up combined critical essays, interviews, manifestos, and reviews to shape transnational conversations about film art, exhibition, and technology.
Close Up was launched in 1927 amid interwar debates that engaged Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Epstein, Fritz Lang, and F.W. Murnau as exemplars of competing approaches to cinema. Its founder sought to mediate between British exhibition practices exemplified by Bioscope and continental theorists associated with Cahiers du cinéma precursors and the Bauhaus. During its run Close Up published responses to productions such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Battleship Potemkin, Metropolis, Napoléon, and The Passion of Joan of Arc. The periodical navigated shifts from silent to sound cinema, addressing technologies like the Vitaphone and institutions such as British International Pictures and the Gaumont Film Company. Financial pressures and changing markets contributed to its closure in 1933, contemporaneous with the consolidation of studios including MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Pictures.
Close Up positioned itself as a platform for film as art, advocating for approaches influenced by Formalism currents and the montage theories of Lev Kuleshov and Vsevolod Meyerhold while critiquing narrative conventions associated with Hollywood auteurs such as D.W. Griffith and John Ford. Its editorial agenda included polemics on realism invoking Andre Bazin-like debates, examinations of acting techniques linked to Konstantin Stanislavski, and reflections on film music referencing composers like Dmitri Shostakovich and Max Steiner. Regular features examined film festivals, referencing early manifestations of gatherings later formalized by Venice Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival antecedents, and itinerant screenings organized by societies such as the Cinema Society. Close Up reviewed works distributed by companies including Gaumont-British, Rank Organisation, Cinecittà, and explored avant-garde shorts associated with Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Maya Deren.
The magazine's pages hosted critics, theorists, and practitioners whose influence extended across film studies and production. Contributors invoked or worked alongside figures like Alfred Hitchcock, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Robert J. Flaherty. Writers who published in Close Up entered dialogues with contemporaries such as Pascin, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound in cultural criticism, and with institutional actors including British Film Institute advocates and broadcasters at the British Broadcasting Corporation. The magazine amplified the reputations of directors whose work later became canonical—Luis Buñuel, Max Ophüls, Ernst Lubitsch, and Yasujiro Ozu—and provided early English-language exposure to continental critics like Siegfried Kracauer and Rudolf Arnheim.
Close Up combined typographic modernism influenced by Jan Tschichold and El Lissitzky with photographic layouts influenced by Alexander Rodchenko and the photographic essays in Vu and Picture Post. Covers and interiors often reproduced stills from films such as Battleship Potemkin and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans alongside abstract graphic devices that echoed Constructivism and De Stijl. The magazine experimented with montage-like page rhythms, dense captioning, and juxtaposition of production stills, posters, and shot breakdowns similar to methods used by set designers working with Oskar Schlemmer and art directors from UFA. Illustrations and photomontages created visual arguments aligning cinematic form with contemporary movements in painting and photography.
Close Up circulated primarily in the United Kingdom but reached readers across Europe and North America through subscriptions and specialized booksellers dealing in periodicals that also stocked publications such as Sight & Sound, Variety, and Film Culture. It was available at cultural venues including film societies, British Film Institute events, and university libraries connected to institutions like University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. The magazine's readership included critics, exhibitors, directors, and intellectuals in networks linked to the Sorbonne, Columbia University, and avant-garde circles in Paris, Berlin, and New York City.
Contemporaneous reception ranged from praise by modernist advocates—those sympathetic to Constructivism, Surrealism, and montage theory—to criticism by proponents of mainstream cinema tied to Hollywood studio system practices. Close Up influenced later scholarly paradigms in film studies, contributing to debates that would be taken up by scholars at institutions such as University of California, Los Angeles, Yale University, and the Filmoteca Española. Retrospectives and citations in histories of cinema connected the magazine to movements surrounding European avant-garde cinema and to the institutionalization of film criticism in journals like Film Quarterly.
Physical runs of Close Up are held in special collections at national and university libraries including the British Library, Library of Congress, and film archives such as the British Film Institute National Archive and Cinémathèque Française. Digitization projects undertaken by academic libraries and cultural heritage institutions have made portions of the run accessible alongside parallel digitized holdings like those of Sight & Sound and Film Comment. Preservation efforts coordinate with catalogues in repositories such as WorldCat and partnerships involving the European Film Gateway and national digitization initiatives.
Category:Film magazines