Piccadilly (1929)

Directed by

Ewald André Dupont

Genre

drama film, silent film, crime film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 48m

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 35 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A love triangle forms among a wealthy nightclub owner, a jealous dancer, and a rising Chinese performer in 1920s London. Class and race tensions collide backstage at a popular Soho club, leading to a murder accusation.

stylizedtensemelancholicvisually lushatmosphericbitter-sweetgrittyslow-burn

What happens

Piccadilly is a 1929 British silent and sound drama film directed by E.A. Dupont, written by Arnold Bennett and starring Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, and Jameson Thomas. The film was shot on location in London, produced by British International Pictures. This film initially was released as a silent in February 1929 but was largely ignored due to the general public's apathy to silent films. Due to the popularity of sound films, the American film company Sono Art-World Wide Pictures collaborated with B.I.P. to produce a sound version of the film in June of the same year for cinemas wired for sound. They recorded the soundtrack using the RCA Photophone sound system. This version included a music score and sound effects by Harry Gordon, along with a five-minute sound prologue titled "Prologue to Piccadilly" that was added to the beginning of the film, featuring just two actors: Jameson Thomas who plays Valentine Wilmot in the film and John Longden as the man from China. The part-talkie was the version that was exhibited in the United States, released by Sono Art-World Wide Pictures in July 1929. The majority of people in 1929 saw the sound version and this is the version that survives. As a film published in 1929, it entered the public domain on January 1, 2025. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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