Up Close And Personal: The History Of The Close-Up In Film
Early movie-goers were intimidated by the close-up but studios and movie stars were quick to seize upon the device’s power...
“Alright, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” As lines of movie dialogue go, Gloria Swanson’s famous command is right up there with “I coulda been a contender” and “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” But as far as the history of the close-up is concerned, it’s another of Norma Desmond’s comments in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard that hints at the importance of the cinematic breakthrough. “We didn’t need dialogue,” snaps the fading star when asked about working in the silent era.
“We had faces!”
The first ever face to appear on film in close-up belonged to one Fred Ott who was photographed while sneezing by inventor Thomas Edison in 1894. At only seven seconds long, the catchily titled Edison Kinetoscopic Record Of A Sneeze could hardly be described as a feature film. But it wasn’t long before the early Hollywood studios were using the technique in their movies.
Not that audiences knew what to make of the close-up. The very people who were frightened by such mundane images as a train pulling into a station were equally scared by the sight of a person shot from the shoulders up. As historian Rob Lewis explains, “Audiences didn’t know what to make of the fact a man was missing his legs, arms and torso. It sounds ridiculous today, but in the early 1900s, the close-up seemed like the very worst kind of technological witchcraft.”
If movie-goers were intimidated by the close-up, the studios and the early movie stars were quick to seize upon the device’s power. In Fame In The 20th Century, Clive James claimed that the introduction of the technique was one of the foundation stones of modern-day celebrity. Certainly the human face had never before seemed so big. And with the moving image adding an amazing air of intimacy to the portrait, cinemagoers found themselves in the odd position of being incredibly familiar with the face of a complete stranger.
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