Close-up<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Focusing on the intimacy and emotion of the human face<\/strong> On a technical level, a close-up (as its name implies) is a shot that captures an image up close. Inanimate objects get close-ups as well if they have a metaphorical or narrative importance \u2013 think of the snow globe in Charles Foster Kane\u2019s hand in Citizen Kane<\/em> \u2013 but for our purposes, we\u2019ll focus on the human face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emotion<\/strong> \u201cThe close-up, the correctly illuminated, directed and acted close-up of an actor, is and remains the height of cinematography,\u201d visionary Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman once said. \u201cThere is nothing better. That incredibly strange and mysterious contact you can suddenly experience with another soul through an actor\u2019s gaze. A sudden thought, blood that drains away or blood that pumps into the face, the trembling nostrils, the suddenly shiny complexion or mute silence, that is to me some of the most incredible and fascinating moments you will ever experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s little surprise that Bergman felt so passionately about the close-up. A chronicler of the human soul, the filmmaker spent his career excavating the psychic trauma lurking within his tormented characters. By placing the camera close to his actors\u2019 faces, he created an emotional landscape for us to study, and he elicited performances that were remarkably open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Persona<\/em>, Bibi Andersson plays Alma, a nurse assigned to care for Elisabet (Liv Ullmann), an acclaimed actress who seems to have had a breakdown \u2013 without warning, she\u2019s stopped speaking. The two women spend some time together in a house away from the city so that Elisabet can recuperate, only to discover that their personalities are starting to merge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bergman makes extensive use of close-ups in Persona<\/em> as he leaves us feeling uneasy about this difficult relationship between caregiver and performer. Staring intently at Andersson\u2019s and Ullmann\u2019s faces, his camera hints at their troubled interior lives. In Bergman\u2019s hands, the technique probes the minute facets of the human experience, underlining every sliver of anguish and apprehension in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Starkness<\/strong> In Sunset Boulevard,<\/em> Norma Desmond, who was a star during the silent era, laments this new age of talkies. \u201cWe didn\u2019t need dialogue,\u201d she sniffs. \u201cWe had faces!\u201d A landmark silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc<\/em>, illustrates what Desmond meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film chronicles Joan\u2019s (Maria Falconetti) final moments as she is tried for heresy, convicted and executed. Director Carl Theodor Dreyer aimed for utter realism in this story of the fifteenth-century martyr, drawing on extensive research to craft this portrait, and he relied on intense close-ups to make the audience feel that they were as close to the drama as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The effect is devastating: In The Passion of Joan of Arc,<\/em> there is no escape for the viewer, who experiences Joan\u2019s ordeal right alongside her. Falconetti\u2019s emotive face says more than dialogue ever could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Romance<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s important for the audience to have a direct connection to the character,\u201d director Barry Jenkins said in 2018, \u201cand when an actor\u2019s performing, there\u2019s always some degree of distance. If the performance goes away, and there\u2019s this perfect fusion between actor and character, then I want the audience to look right into that person\u2019s eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For his adaptation of the James Baldwin novel, Jenkins incorporated close-ups of his leads, KiKi Layne and Stephan James, who play young lovers who, occasionally, look directly at the camera. If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em> is a film about the beauty and warmth of true love, and close-ups allow us to feel embedded in the characters\u2019 passion. It\u2019s an intimacy that\u2019s vulnerable but also intensely moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think when you think of chemistry, you think, \u2018Oh, those two actors just want to tear each other\u2019s clothes off,\u2019\u201d Jenkins said in the same interview. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not what I\u2019m speaking of when I speak of chemistry. I\u2019m talking about two people who feel legitimately connected, whose viewpoints and thoughts dovetail.\u201d He achieves that effortlessly by drawing us close to these lovers. In this excerpt from his new book, Tim Grierson explains the close-up via its use in ‘Persona,’ ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc,’ and ‘If Beale Street Could Talk.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":16080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[1495,162],"class_list":["post-16076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-book-excerpt","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22555,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16076\/revisions\/22555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cAll right, Mr. DeMille, I\u2019m ready for my close-up.\u201d That line, spoken by the deluded actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) near the end of Sunset Boulevard<\/em>, is probably what most moviegoers think of when discussing the filmmaking technique of placing the camera close to an actor\u2019s face. A close-up allows a character to dominate the frame, giving us an intimate view of her expression and, in theory, a window into what she\u2019s thinking and feeling. It can be a sort of cinematic punctuation, the shot\u2019s immediacy serving as a startling contrast to the shots that came before. It can also strip an actor bare, exposing her to the audience with an emotional nakedness that can be powerful or uncomfortable. We\u2019re drawn in by a close-up \u2013 we cannot look away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/persona-1024x576.jpg\")
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Persona<\/em>, 1966
Director: Ingmar Bergman; cinematography: Sven Nykvist; actor: Liv Ullmann<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/passion-of-joan-1024x576.jpg\")
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The Passion of Joan of Arc<\/em>, 1928
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer; cinematography: Rudolph Mat\u00e9; actor: Maria Falconetti<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/BEALE-ST-1024x576.jpg\")
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If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em>, 2018
Director: Barry Jenkins; cinematography: James Laxton; actors: KiKi Layne, Stephan James<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Excerpted from<\/strong>\u00a0This is How You Make a Movie <\/em>by\u00a0Tim Grierson Copyright \u00a9 2021 by\u00a0Tim Grierson. Excerpted by permission of Laurence King Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.<\/strong> ![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
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