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Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
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Piccadilly
(1929)

E.A. Dupont’s film Piccadilly (1929) is certainly best remembered for the performance by Anna May Wong as a vamping dancer, Shosho, who becomes the star of the Piccadily Club and the obsession of Valentine Wilmot (Jameson Thomas), the owner of the club.

When a dispute between club owner Wilmot comes to a head with his main entertainment attraction, dancer Victor Smiles (Cyril Ritchard) — who leaves for New York’s Broadway — Wilmot is forced to accept that his lover, dancer Mabel Greenfield (Gilda Gray), is not strong enough to continue to fill the house each night. Struck by the unforgetable magnetism of Shosho (Anna May Wong), a recently-fired dishwasher, Wilmot gambles the whole business on her inexplicably fascinating dancing style — but not until he has made a number of exploitive concessions to her including the choice of costumes and the members of her accompanying band, which places Shosho’s jealous associate Jimmy (King Ho Chang) close at hand.

With his gamble a raging success, Wilmot finds himself drawn to Shosho and alienating the affections of Mabel — out with the old and in with the new. Drawn into the low-life world that Shosho remains part of, Wilmot begins a downward spiral — with seduction and jealousy rampant among Wilmot, Shosho, Mabel and Jimmy — that culminates in Wilmot being accused of a horrible crime. After a lengthy courtroom sequence, all ends with tragic consequences for two of the main characters. Guess who?

Alfred Hitchcock alumni Jameson Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, Harry Terry (as the bar owner against interracial dancing), and John Longden (the traveler in the sound prologue) appear in the film. Thomas does a fine job as Wilmot, but we revile Ritchard as an actor, and he’s a joke here as a dancer. Gilda Gray (the poorman’s Marlene Dietrich) fares a little better on both counts, helped by several well-conceived camera shots. But neither Ritchard nor Gray are helped by the silly choreography of the opening dance number, and the sequence is saved from total absurdity by the brief appearance of Charles Laughton as a finicky diner.

The film is stylishly directed by E.A. Dupont, with several sweeping and energetic camera moves through full sets to spice up the presentation of the story. His engaging camera setups and attention to action moving into and out of the frame raises the film far above the average cinematic fare of the late 1920s.

— Carl Bennett

The Milestone Cinematheque
2023 Blu-ray Disc edition

Piccadilly (1929), color-tinted black & white and black & white, 109 minutes, not rated.

Milestone Films, distributed by Kino Lorber,
unknown catalog number, UPC 7-38329-26394-2.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region A Blu-ray Disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in pillarboxed 16:9 (1920 x 1080 pixels) 24 fps progressive scan image encoded in SDR AVC format at ? Mbps average video bit rate; LPCM 2.0 stereo sound encoded at ? Mbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; chapter stops; standard BD keepcase; $29.95.
Release date: 26 September 2023.
Country of origin: USA

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from a high-definition scan of 35mm archival print materials.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed by Neil Brand.

Supplemental material includes an audio commentary by film historian Farran Smith Nehme; and introduction to the 1929 sound film version; and a video presentation of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival panel, “Dangerous to Know: The Career and Legacy of Anna May Wong,” moderated by B. Ruby Rich.

Sight unseen, we recommend this edition of Piccadilly as the best-available North American home video edition available.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is also available from . . .

The Milestone Collection
2005 DVD edition

Piccadilly (1929), color-tinted black & white and black & white, 108 minutes, not rated.

Milestone Film & Video, distributed by Image Entertainment,
ID2141MLSDVD, UPC 0-14381-21412-3.
One single-sided, dual-layered, Region 1 NTSC DVD disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), 6.0 Mbps average video bit rate, 224 Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 18 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $29.99.
Release date: 1 March 2005.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 8 / audio: 7 / additional content: 6 / overall: 7.

This DVD edition — a licensed version of the BFI edition below — has been mastered from restored 35mm elements, which retain many of the minor flaws present in the source material utilized for the BFI restoration of the film: moderate speckling and dust, slight emulsion damage and transient scratches. We assume that the predominantly amber color-tinting duplicates that of the surviving materials. The cumulative results of the restoration, which we have viewed both on DVD and by projected film print, are very-good to excellent.

This edition features a new small-orchestral music score composed by Neil Brand with noirish tinges accenting the overall jazzish nature of the music, which at times feels too modern and upbeat for the tone of the film. The disc’s bonus material includes the prologue from the sound version of the film with Jameson Thomas and John Longden in a dramatic introduction (5 minutes), a commentary by Brand (over scenes from the film) on composing the score for Piccadilly (20 Minutes), exerpts from a panel discussion “Dangerous to Know: The Career and Legacy of Anna May Wong” held during the 2004 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (22 minutes), a photo gallery including Anna May Wong portraits (26 photos, including repeated images), Piccadilly stills (93 photos, including repeated images) and a Piccadilly press materials gallery (10 images), plus DVD-ROM features including Five Authors in Search of Anna May Wong.

We recommend this edition of Piccadilly for Anna May Wong fans and silent film enthusiasts alike.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

BFI Video
2004 DVD edition

Piccadilly (1929), color-tinted black & white and black & white, 108 minutes, BBFC Classification PG.

BFI Video Publishing, BFIVD579, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided?, dual-layered?, Region 2 PAL DVD disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 576 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles?, no foreign language subtitles?, chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; £15.99.
Release date: 28 June 2004.
Country of origin: England

We have reviewed the American version of this DVD edition above. We would expect that the film itself would be identical in presentation to the edition above. This BFI edition based on their recent restoration includes the prologue from the sound version of the film with Jameson Thomas and John Longden.

This edition features a new small-orchestral music score composed by Neil Brand with noirish tinges accenting the overall jazzish feel of the music, and biographies of E.A. Dupont and Anna May Wong.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

Grapevine Video
2011 DVD edition

Piccadilly (1929), color-tinted and color-toned black & white, 104 minutes, not rated.

Grapevine Video, no catalog number, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $14.95.
Release date: September 2011.
Country of origin: USA

This DVD-R edition has likely been mastered from a 16mm reduction print.

The presentation features music score compiled from preexisting recordings.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .

Sunrise Silents
2004 DVD edition

Piccadilly (1929), color-tinted black & white, 110 minutes, not rated.

Sunrise Silents,
PAMW-N (NTSC) or PAMW-P (PAL), no UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC and PAL DVD-R disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, 192 Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $21.95.
Release date: October? 2004.
Country of origin: USA

We do not know whether this DVD-R edition from public-domain home video company Sunrise Silents has been transferred from 16mm or 8mm print materials, but we suspect that the source print was an 8mm reduction print.

The film is likely accompanied by a music score performed on MIDI-driven synthesizers.

If you own a copy of this disc please consider loaning it to us to review for documentation purposes. We pay postage both ways.

SUNRISE SILENTS has discontinued business and this edition is . . .