MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

(Piccadilly - Nachtwelt [de])

UK 1929
d: Ewald André Dupont
Absolut Medien (Region 2 de)

>> The Cast & Crew [click to show or hide]

Big silent buses, spilling light out onto an incongruously familiar West End, display the film's credits and introduce us to Dupont's glitteringly sinister London. Descending from the palatial dance-floor of a Piccadilly nightclub, we pass through the kitchen and the scullery to a world of roughhouse pubs and seamy Chinese emporia. Anna May Wong has a wiry strength which belies expectations of lotus-flower passivity. She distracts the dishwashers with her table-top dancing, and snares her all-powerful boss (Thomas) with her serpentine sensuality. The melodramatic machinations of the plot may be weak, but Dupont's assured direction, Alfred Jünge's art direction, and Werner Brandes' lighting create an atmosphere so hauntingly evocative as to be satisfying in itself.
— RMy, Time Out Film Guide
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This remarkable British silent is special in many ways. Directed by German master E.A. Dupont, with lavish sets and luscious cinematography by two of his compatriots, Alfred Junge and Werner Brandes, it charts the erotic hold of a Chinese beauty (Anna May Wong) over the owner of a palatial London nightclub (Jameson Thomas). He fires her as a dishwasher for distracting coworkers with her tabletop dancing, then hires her back as a featured performer, to the consternation of his mistress (Gilda Gray). Scripted by Zola-inspired novelist Arnold Bennett, with significant roles played by Cyril Ritchard and Charles Laughton, this is far ahead of its time in its treatment of both race and gender. Dupont has an original way of employing camera movement to suggest erotic chemistry between characters, and Wong, who even provoked a rave notice from Walter Benjamin, is as memorable and confident as Louise Brooks was in the films of G.W. Pabst, made around the same time.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
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Piccadilly is a swift, old-fashioned murder mystery involving dancers, restaurateurs, Chinese scullery maids and the like, with some clever twists enhanced by Dupont's very modern turns. The cast includes, on the male side, Charles Laughton and Cyril Ritchard; and on the female side, Anna May Wong, in what is considered to be her finest screen role, and Gilda Gray, a shimmy-dancer-turned-actress, for whom (according to the New York Times in 1929) the screenplay was written. Photography by Verner Brandes and settings by Alfred Junge complete the picture, which the Times indicates was the film to break the trend of "England and America...deploring each other's motion pictures.... The National Board of Review chose to call [Piccadilly] 'the first serious contender of our American product to reach these shores from English studios.'" (JB)
A 1929 Kinematograph review held that "it is first and last a cameraman's production. Werner Brandes has given us arresting camerawork which has never been equalled in a British feature. His cabaret scenes, his interiors and exteriors are often almost stereoscopic in effect, while the technical qualities, camera angles and devices are outstanding....He makes rather too much of the moving camera and traveling shots, but no one can deny his cleverness..."
— PFA
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Although Gray is the movie's nominal star, and Charles Laughton has a memorable cameo as a swinish club customer, Piccadilly is stolen by Wong, a Chinese American product of Hollywood High, whose movie career was initially boosted and then quickly stymied by racial prejudice. (Remembered mainly as Marlene Dietrich's glamorous, if taciturn, sidekick in Shanghai Express, Wong is poised for rediscovery—the subject of an unreleased documentary, three new biographies, and an upcoming MOMA retrospective.) Her hair bobbed and banged in the manner of contemporary expatriate and sister femme fatale Louise Brooks, Wong exudes a similarly cool, appraising sexuality. She shimmers and so does this newly restored, alternately blue- and amber-tinted, print.
— Village Voice J. Hoberman
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"Piccadilly, restored to its original glory, was a genuine revelation to me. It's a bold, beautifully crafted, completely modern picture - one of the truly great films of the silent era."
Martin Scorsese, New York, 20 February 2004