close up - Monoskop

INTRODUCTION
Reading Close Up, 1927-1933
Anne Friedberg
A new form of film-writing
The close up is the soul of the cinema ... the close up limits and directs attention.
As an emotional indicator, it overwhelms me. I have neither the right nor the ability
to be distracted. It speaks the present imperative of the verb to understand. 1
The close up has not only widened our vision of life, it has also deepened it. 2
With the close up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The
enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was
visible, though unclear; it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.
... The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to
unconscious impulses. 3
If... an article does not slide into being simply a synopsis, it can reflect the
stimulated thoughts of a spectator under the immediate impression of the work. ...
This is an examination of the film itself in close-up: through a prism of firm
analysis the article 'breaks down' the film into its parts, resolves its element, to
study the whole just as a new model of construction is studied by engineers and
specialists in their own field of technique.
This must be the view of the film from the standpoint of a professional journal.
There must be an appraisal of the film from the positions of both 'long shot' and
'medium shot' - but firstly it must be an examination 'in close-up' - a close-up view
of all its component links. 4
'Close up' was a technical term for magnification through a lens, but also - more
metaphorically - it meant close analysis, scrutiny, an 'optic'. To many, the close-up played
a critical role in a wholly new visual rhetoric. To the French film-maker and theorist Jean
Epstein, the close-up was an essential component of photogenic - it limited and directed
attention, indicated emotion, magnified aesthetic import. To the Hungarian scenarist and
director Bela Balazs, the close-up produced revelations of a new emotional and dramatic
magnitude in showing the 'microphysiognomy' of the human face. 5 To the German
cultural critic Walter Benjamin, the close-up supplied a new visual order, rendering