• Ready for Her Close-up

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      Late in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953), the title character, played with erotic intensity by Harriet Andersson, sits in a smoky café. She rotates her head slightly, and her eyes catch the camera. She peers into it, into us, the viewers, and the camera retorts by moving in closer, until we feel we can practically brush against her pouting lips and inky black pupils. “Monika’s returning our gaze distances us from the fiction,” writes Laura Hubner for Criterion. “It also says, ‘Look at me and judge me if you dare.’” (For Jean-Luc Godard, writing in 1958, it was “the saddest shot in the history of cinema”.) In honor of this instance of astonishing intimacy’s joining the collection, we’ve compiled a gallery of some of our favorite actresses in close-up.

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      Renée Falconetti’s face, held in a tight frame for most of 1928’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, by director Carl Th. Dreyer, is among the most iconic images in cinema history.

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      In 1962’s Vivre sa vie, Godard filmed Anna Karina watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, and her tearful communion with Falconetti’s martyr became a defining image of the nouvelle vague.

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      Legendary director of photography Jack Cardiff’s adoration of actresses is evident in the lovingly lit close-ups he lavishes on Deborah Kerr and her costars in Powell and Pressburger’s glorious Technicolor Black Narcissus, from 1947.

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      A film about dance, Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948) is often trained on bodies in motion. But it’s also about passion, jealousy, and obsession, and to emphasize those, Cardiff punctuates the action with some remarkable extreme close-ups of Moira Shearer’s diva ballerina.

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      Masahiro Shinoda’s stylish yakuza noir Pale Flower (1964) has no shortage of stunning shots—and many of them feature the wraithlike Mariko Kaga, who often literally glows with mysterious allure thanks to Masao Kosugi’s incandescent cinematography.

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      Many directors have studied Catherine Deneuve’s jewel-like beauty in close-up, but right from the too-close-for-comfort opening shot of 1965’s Repulsion (a zoom out from her eyeball), Roman Polanski finds something frighteningly inscrutable in that beautiful dazed stare.

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      Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984) begins in the vast, punishing desert, against which star Harry Dean Stanton is dwarfed. But in the second half, DP Robby Müller’s camera moves in closer, fixing on the lovely and pensive visage of Nastassja Kinski, staring from behind a peep-show’s one-way mirror.

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      Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films, especially those in his Three Colors trilogy, are renowned for the way they capture fragile emotional spaces. 1993’s Blue, in particular, is a study of a face, belonging to a luminously mournful Juliette Binoche.

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      Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are renowned for keeping their actors tightly framed. Their Palme d’Or–winning Rosetta (1999) is the most radical example of this—the camera hardly leaves actress Emilie Dequenne’s shoulder, from first shot to overwhelming last.

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      Lars von Trier is another director who loves for the camera to get chummy with his actors (remember Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves and Björk in Dancer in the Dark?), so it’s not a shock when Charlotte Gainsbourg stares directly into the camera during Antichrist’s slow-motion prologue.

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      Has another filmmaker ever captured as much unbridled joy in one image as Jean Vigo does in this one of a beaming Dita Parlo in the ethereal dream sequence in L’Atalante (1934)?

    Next
    Large_monika

      1 of 12  

    Late in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953), the title character, played with erotic intensity by Harriet Andersson, sits in a smoky café. She rotates her head slightly, and her eyes catch the camera. She peers into it, into us, the viewers, and the camera retorts by moving in closer, until we feel we can practically brush against her pouting lips and inky black pupils. “Monika’s returning our gaze distances us from the fiction,” writes Laura Hubner for Criterion. “It also says, ‘Look at me and judge me if you dare.’” (For Jean-Luc Godard, writing in 1958, it was “the saddest shot in the history of cinema”.) In honor of this instance of astonishing intimacy’s joining the collection, we’ve compiled a gallery of some of our favorite actresses in close-up.

     
     
     

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24 comments

  • By jrsl76
    June 04, 2012
    04:35 PM

    Really, no Louise Brooks and her iconic veil lift in "Pandora's Box"?
    Reply

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  • By Wesley
    June 04, 2012
    05:36 PM

    This also sounds similar to that scene where Anna Karina looks into the camera in Vivre sa vie.
    Reply

  • By Natia
    June 04, 2012
    05:52 PM

    I would add Nicole Kidman indelible close-up from "Birth" to this list
    Reply

  • By NAME
    June 04, 2012
    07:48 PM

    No "Nights of Cabiria"? That ending look alone is one of my favorite movie images ever.
    Reply

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    • By Bryan C. Buckley
      June 05, 2012
      07:07 PM

      I second this comment. And it's not in the collection (yet, wink wink) but I've got to add Chaplin's Tramp at the end of "City Lights"...my favorite ending, ever. Gets me every time.

    • By BlakeEvans
      June 07, 2012
      02:24 AM

      I just saw that film for the first time today - that ending is truly unforgettable. Fellini's best in his "neo-realist" period.

    • By Phil T
      June 12, 2012
      08:06 PM

      Completely agree. If I could choose to have created a single artistic statement in my life, it would be the final moments of Nights of Cabiria. And, interestingly, whomever also mentioned City Lights...I second that addition as well. These two comprise my personal favorite endings in all of cinema.

    • By Ingmar53
      June 12, 2012
      08:49 PM

      Absolutely... Giulietta Masina's glance into the camera at the end of "Nights of Cabiria" is the perfect ending of my favorite Fellini film.

  • By yorgolee
    June 04, 2012
    08:12 PM

    Lovely procession of images. I've mentally added Monica Vitti from just about any of her Antonioni roles.
    Reply

  • By Jonathan Rimorin
    June 05, 2012
    12:12 PM

    My favourite close-up: when Deneuve looks into the camera and says "Je vous en prie" in "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg."
    Reply

  • By Sean Neal
    June 05, 2012
    12:21 PM

    Marlene Dietrich in Agent X27.
    Reply

  • By BF
    June 12, 2012
    03:40 PM

    Maggie Gyllenhgaall's confident self-assertion at the end of "Secretary": "judge me if you dare," she seems to say.
    Reply

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    • By thevoid99
      June 12, 2012
      05:34 PM

      Oh... that is a great close-up. When is "Secretary" coming out for Criterion? It needs a Criterion release. It's among my all-time favorite films.

  • By Joe Oostvogels
    June 12, 2012
    04:06 PM

    No shortage in gorgeous women here but nothing can beat the emotion triggered by Giuletta Masina in the ending of "Notti di Cabiria". Although Liza Minelli in "Cabaret" was also unforgettable!
    Reply

  • By Ingmar53
    June 12, 2012
    08:55 PM

    And what about Liv Ullmann's unblinking stare into the camera as the radio plays at the beginning of "Persona," or her later performance in "Cries and Whispers" as the late Erland Josephson forces her to confront her true self in the mirror? The latter scene is a brilliant melding of the talents of Bergman, Nykvist, Josephson and Ullmann.
    Reply

  • By MA
    June 12, 2012
    09:50 PM

    Since the thread has veered from the limits of the collection (and of the general close-up): James Gray has called the moment Kim Novak looks into the camera in Vertigo "the greatest moment in the history of cinema". (He pays an homage of sorts in Two Lovers, where both G Paltrow and V Shaw, at different moments, look into the camera.) He does say he considers Nights of Cabiria a close contender!
    Reply

  • By Mark Goodall
    June 13, 2012
    10:39 AM

    No close-ups of men?
    Reply

  • By Spanglish In Lesbilandia
    June 13, 2012
    06:37 PM

    What about Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box???
    Reply

  • By Larry
    June 13, 2012
    09:09 PM

    Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil
    Reply

  • By furkan98
    August 02, 2012
    08:26 AM

    My favourite close-ups are from Vivre Sa Vie and Blue.
    Reply

  • By HUSKY
    August 14, 2012
    09:08 PM

    Beautiful.
    Reply

  • By Nicole
    October 31, 2012
    01:42 PM

    I was expecting Elisabeth Vogler's close-up in Persona. The one where she was watching the sun set.
    Reply

  • By Jeff Stills
    October 31, 2012
    02:18 PM

    Persona is not in the Criterion Collection, alas.
    Reply

  • By M_Mayer
    December 10, 2012
    07:37 PM

    and...there's 300+ women who should also be on this list
    Reply

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