Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Piccadilly (1929)

E.A. Dupont’s film Piccadilly (1929) is certainly best remembered for the performance by Anna May Wong as a vamping dancer, Shosho, who becomes the star of the Piccadily Club and the obsession of Valentine Wilmot (Jameson Thomas), the owner of the club.

When a dispute between club owner Wilmot comes to a head with his main entertainment attraction, dancer Victor Smiles (Cyril Ritchard) — who leaves for New York’s Broadway — Wilmot is forced to accept that his lover, dancer Mabel Greenfield (Gilda Gray), is not strong enough to continue to fill the house each night. Struck by the unforgetable magnetism of Shosho (Anna May Wong), a recently-fired dishwasher, Wilmot gambles the whole business on her inexplicably fascinating dancing style — but not until he has made a number of exploitive concessions to her including the choice of costumes and the members of her accompanying band, which places Shosho’s jealous associate Jimmy (King Ho Chang) close at hand.

With his gamble a raging success, Wilmot finds himself drawn to Shosho and alienating the affections of Mabel — out with the old and in with the new. Drawn into the low-life world that Shosho remains part of, Wilmot begins a downward spiral — with seduction and jealousy rampant among Wilmot, Shosho, Mabel and Jimmy — that culminates in Wilmot being accused of a horrible crime. After a lengthy courtroom sequence, all ends with tragic consequences for two of the main characters. Guess who?

Alfred Hitchcock alumni Jameson Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, Harry Terry (as the bar owner against interracial dancing), and John Longden (the traveler in the sound prologue) appear in the film. Thomas does a fine job as Wilmot, but we revile Ritchard as an actor, and he’s a joke here as a dancer. Gilda Gray (the poorman’s Marlene Dietrich) fares a little better on both counts, helped by several well-conceived camera shots. But neither Ritchard nor Gray are helped by the silly choreography of the opening dance number, and the sequence is saved from total absurdity by the appearance of a moustached Charles Laughton as a finicky diner.

The film is stylishly directed by E.A. Dupont, with several sweeping and energetic camera moves through full sets to spice up the presentation of the story. His engaging camera setups and attention to action moving into and out of the frame raises the film far above the average cinematic fare of the late 1920s.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from the British Film Institute’s high-definition restoration from 35mm archival print materials. The new scan has been digitally stabilized and cleaned removing the majority of dust, speckling, fine scratches, exposure fluctations and other flaws. The results are generally excellent and a pleasure to watch.

The film is presented with a music score composed by Neil Brand and performed by a small ensemble, with noirish tinges accenting the overall jazzish nature of the music.

Supplemental material includes an entertaining and informative audio commentary by film historian Farran Smith Nehme; and introduction to the 1929 sound film version (5 minutes); Neil Brand on the 2005 music score for Piccadilly (20 minutes); and a video presentation of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival panel, “Dangerous to Know: The Career and Legacy of Anna May Wong,” moderated by B. Ruby Rich (22 minutes).

We enthusiatically recommend this edition of Piccadilly as the best-available North American home video edition available.

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