Piccadilly (no 49)

by Allan Fish

(UK 1929 109m) DVD1/2

Nodding Buddha

p  E.A.Dupont  d  E.A.Dupont  w  Arnold Bennett  ph  Werner Brandes  m  Neil Brand (DVD reissue)  art  Alfred Junge

Anna May Wong (Shosho), Jameson Thomas (Valentine Wilmot), Gilda Gray (Mable Greenfield), Cyril Ritchard (Victor Smiles), King Ho Chang (Jim), Charles Laughton (diner), Hannah Jones (Bessie), Ellen Pollock (vamp), Ray Milland,

One of the last silent films to go into production in Blighty, it was later reedited with some talkie sequences added, but all such films to be so changed midstream were inevitably changed for the worse (even Hitch’s Blackmail was greater as a silent, for all its merits as a talkie).  Dupont’s film wasn’t totally dismissed at the time, but it was accused of having too little plot at its core, of being all about visual style and directorial panache.  Dupont wasn’t the first director to be so charged and certainly wouldn’t be the last.  His Variety was regarded as one of the seminal German films of the twenties, its reputation only dimmed by its unfathomable unavailability in recent times.  Piccadilly, at least, has been given the deluxe restoration treatment and, in the BFI print, it is what Martin Scorsese said it was; not only a revelation, but “one of the truly great films of the silent era.”

            Piccadilly is, as one might expect, set in the eponymous nightlife of London, in and around the Piccadilly Club.  Here the main attractions are dance partners Mabel and Victor.  Victor loves Mabel, but Mabel prefers her richer manager and owner of the club Valentine.  Things change dramatically one night when, following complaints from a customer about a dirty plate, Valentine goes to the scullery and finds Chinese immigrant girl Shosho dancing in slinky fashion on the tables.  He fires her, but makes a point of having her dance for him and they become lovers, much to the chagrin of not only Mabel but Shosho’s Chinese lover Jim.

            Essentially a melodramatic tale of revenge, sex and the highlife, it’s made into so much more not only by the directorial craftsmanship but that of his collaborators and the undertones they allow to permeate the screen.  Some might object to the yellow tinting of many sequences as representing a Chinese racial stereotype, but the yellow seems rather an insidious shade more representative of the moral decay of the Limehouse drug dens, pubs and brothels in and around which the characters float.  Some sequences are left in their original monochrome, the night-time pieces bathed in suitable moonlit blue, while Wong’s sexual dances at the Piccadilly are bathed in a pink, erotic glow.  Certainly the film is gorgeously photographed and the designs of Alfred Junge – later master designer for the Archers – are wonderfully evocative.  More interesting still is the restless nature of Dupont’s camera.  With the possible exception of Max Ophuls, no director allowed his camera to move so freely and effortlessly as Dupont.  Some of the encircling shots inside the Piccadilly are still a technical marvel eighty years on, while the slow track along the bar as drinks are handed out and Thomas’ hand comes to rest on Wong’s is one of the greatest, and most sensual of its era. 

            Everything is purely stylised.  Even the credits are given in a mobile manner, in the form of advertising hoardings on the side of those infamous red buses moving about through the London streets at night.  Wong’s dances are deliberately pitched just this side of parody and Wong, for her part, has never been better or sexier.  The contemporary posters may have unfairly given the males in the audience hopes of seeing her topless, but even clothed she reeks of sex and transgression, as indeed she should at a time when miscegenation was still pretty much a taboo.  The rest of the cast meanwhile orbit round her, dazzled by her oriental exoticism.  In the end, Dupont knows his story amounts to little, and allows himself a sublime closing sequence.  After reading of the coroner’s court trial after Shosho’s death, a buyer turns to the racing results and celebrates a win.  Behind him, picking up a cigarette stub, is a Chinese carrying a sandwich board advertising a play entitled “Life Goes On.”