Piccadilly
1h 49m
E.A. (Varieté) Dupont's Piccadilly, the 1929 silent masterpiece brilliantly restored by the British Film Institute, stars the sultry Anna May Wong in her greatest role.
After many years of supporting roles in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe in search of better work. And did she find it! Her electric, sexually-charged performance in Piccadilly is a revelation. Like Louise Brooks, that other erotic beauty who left America and found stardom as a siren in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box, Wong found her greatest role abroad. She is mesmerizing as Shosho, the Chinese scullery maid at a Piccadilly nightclub who overnight becomes the toast of London - and the object of desire of all around her. The camera adores Wong, and against Alfred Junge's astonishing set design, she glows on the big screen.
In the 1970s, Louise Brooks was "rediscovered" by writer Kenneth Tynan and cinephiles flocked to the re-release of her films. With this gorgeous restoration of Piccadilly and its first distribution in the US since 1929, audiences across the world fell under the spell of the bewitching Anna May Wong!