Movie Close Up

While the concept of the close-up feels commonplace to viewers now, its introduction to film was nothing short of revolutionary. For theater-goers who were used to seeing stage productions from afar, films brought audiences closer to the actors than ever before through the use of the close-up. While many theorists covered the close-up because of its novelty, perhaps the most interesting among those were Lev Kuleshov and Jean Epstein, due to their direct relationships with the technique through the production of their own films. However, theorists such as Bela Balazs were among the first to write about film critically, inserting an angle from a critic, not a director. All three theorists understand the necessity for the close-up in film, but …show more content…
Balazs writes: “The position of the eyes in the top half of the face, the mouth below; wrinkles now to the right, now to the left - none of this now retains its spatial significance. For what we see is merely a single expression. We see emotions and thoughts. We see something that does not exist in space,” (Balazs, 100-101). In this, Balazs adds that with close-ups, viewers of a film are able to see the true emotion that is being expressed by actors and the details in objects that are presented, creating a more detailed form of expression than theater. He builds on this idea by stating: “When the camera lifts a part of the body or an object from its surroundings and shows it enlarged, the object is still seen to exist in space,” (Balazs, 100). For Balazs, by asserting that close-ups allow the camera to take whatever is on screen and separate it from its surroundings, allows for the object or actor to take over the screen and thus become the focus of the audience’s attention. This differs from what is available for actors and objects in the theater, where audiences are forced to focus their attention, rather than having the director focus their attention for them. Balazs writes about the close-up differently than Kuleshov and Epstein by asserting that it is the director’s job to know when the shot is useful. While Kuleshov …show more content…
According to Epstein, close-ups play an integral role in cinema, allowing audiences to see what the naked eye would not allow them to see, thus separating films from theater. Epstein writes in “Magnification”: “The close-up limits and directs the attention,” (Epstein, 239). By writing this, Epstein is conveying that the close-up allows directors to draw their audiences attention to the exact place they want it to be, without worrying about their eyes wandering to another part of the screen, much like what happens on the stage during theater productions. This also allows for the realistic movement that is seen within these close-up shots, something that the theater does not allow for, creating a realism that is present because of the close-up. Epstein, however, focuses much more on the moments before and after the close-up. “Waiting for the moment when 1,000 meters of intrigue converge in a muscular denouement satisfies me more than the rest of the film,” describes Epstein of his intrigue with the moments before and after the close-up, showing that it’s the true ability to capture something that was previously unable to be captured that makes the close-up unique, not how the technique is used (Epstein, 235). This creates an idea that opposes Kuleshov’s montage, where the close-up can be used continuously to create a unique effect, instead of focusing on the before and