Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929)

Anna May Wong in Piccadilly

Cast: Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, Jameson Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, King Hou Chang, Hannah Jones, Gordon Begg, Harry Terry, Charles Laughton. Screenplay: Arnold Bennett. Cinematography: Werner Brandes. Art direction: Alfred Junge. Film editing: J.W. McConaughty.

I share the opinion of the contemporary reviewer of Piccadilly that Arnold Bennett's screenplay is more interesting than what its director, E.A. Dupont, made of it. Bennett was a major novelist who, like such contemporaries as John Galsworthy and H.G. Wells, fell from favor with the ascendance of modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. It was Woolf's riposte to Bennett, who had written an unfavorable review of her 1922 novel Jacob's Room, that severely damaged his standing among intellectuals. Her essay, "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" contained the much-quoted observation that "on or about December 1910 human character changed," Woolf's way of saying that an exhibition of Post-Impressionist art indicated a new way of approaching existence through the arts. Bennett's naturalistic fiction began to fall in critical esteem. It may simply be that Bennett was so prolific a writer, with more than 30 novels, scores of stories, a substantial number of plays, and hundreds of essays, that he simply spread himself too thin. But his script for Piccadilly shows his interest in marginalized characters, including the lowlife of Limehouse and the backstage competitiveness of the London theater. And most of all, it gave Anna May Wong one of her most prominent and interesting roles, that of a scullery maid named Shosho who becomes a night-club sensation, but falls victim to jealousy tinged with racism. Unfortunately, Dupont's direction is often a little sluggish, and his staging of Shosho's big dance scene doesn't make it clear why her finger-waving hoochie-koochie -- she's outfitted in a costume more Balinese than Chinese -- causes such a sensation. Still, the film benefits from atmospheric sets by Alfred Junge and cinematography by Werner Brandes. It's also full of watchable actors, including Gilda Gray, who rose to fame for her shimmy, as the dancer Shosho replaces in the interest of the audiences and of the club owner. We first see Gray's Mabel when she's teamed with Victor, played by Cyril Ritchard, in a dance duet modeled on Fred and Adele Astaire. Dupont seems more interested in shots of the audience than in the dancers, partly because the plot is set in motion by an unruly diner complaining about a dirty dish. The diner is played by Charles Laughton in his feature film debut. His complaint leads the club owner, Valentine Wilmot, played by Jameson Thomas, to discover that the dishwashers are goofing off and watching one of them, Shosho, dancing. Though he fires Shosho on the spot, he later takes her to his office where he watches her dance, which gives him the idea to give her a big number in the club. When she succeeds, and Mabel discovers that Valentine has fallen in love with Shosho, the plot, as they say, thickens. Although made as a silent film, Piccadilly was enough of a success that the producers decided to add some scenes with sound and a music score. TCM, however, shows a silent version with a score added in 2004 after the film was restored.