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Analysis Of Bela Balazs: A Close-Up

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he said that it 'becomes like photographing words'. He believed that Eisenstein and other Swedish silent film directors were a lot more visual than any recent films.(Nykvist 1998)
The close-up shot is often taken for granted and is used everywhere and sometimes used for no particular reason other than being a safety shot. However, it has only been taken for granted after decades of establishment. "It(close-up) does not only reveal new things but gives meaning to the old"(Balazs 2009).One of the most obvious functions of a close up that a close up does is that it makes one notice elements not noticed before and by doing that it is more revealing of things that one takes for granted. A close-up could give a new perspective on things just by opening …show more content…

It does so without using dialogue. It also does this with help of other elements in the frame or with a relation to other shots as well. Bela Balazs was a Hungarian film critic. Bela Balazs wrote about the 'polyphonic play on features' which is having an additional change in a facial expression even if it is a subtle one could even tell the whole story. A close-up can exist without any relation to the space itself. It could be a scene of its own without actually relating to the mis-en-scene. When a face is isolated from the space it is present in and therefore looking at a close-up and understanding its expressiveness. The feelings and emotions do not have to pertain to the space even if that is what triggers them. A close-up of the face is like a silent soliloquy. While a soliloquy is an element of theatre, it therefore seems unnatural in cinema. A soliloquy externalizes the mental state of the character similarly a close-up, in its isolation can reveal the mental state of the person, the internal storm of the character. Like how a novelist is able to capture the internal conflict of a character in a book a close-up can be used for a similar function as well. It reveals more than just surface drama. When close-ups of objects are shown they are related to human behaviour, certain ways the objects are shown give more meaning to the human expression itself, Balasz refers to this as 'visual anthropomorphism'.(Balazs 2009) In Ingmar Bergman's 'Persona'(Bergman 1966) one of the protagonist Elisabeth Vogler, is admitted in a mental facility as she is unable to talk after a particular incident. Her nurse leaves the radio on for her and while the light is shut, and the camera goes to a close-up of her face, one can feel the mental state of the character when her eyes glint in the dark and she stay wide awake just listening to the radio. The glint in her eyes is one of the most powerful images in the film. In the Kuleshov

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