Picadilly (1929)

After the owner (Jameson Thomas) of a popular nightclub in Picadilly fires his headline attraction (Cyril Ritchard), business drops alarmingly. He hires a Chinese dancer (Anna May Wong) and the club does a booming business again. But the club owner's mistress (Gilda Gray) is jealous of the attention the Chinese dancer is getting from the club owner. Directed by E.A. Dupont (VARIETY), this stylish melodrama is engaging and fluid though Dupont's pacing is often somber. It also could have used more intertitles. For example, there's a sequence in a Limehouse dive where a white woman is attacked for dancing with a black man and she goes off on a lengthy tirade but we're not privy to what she's saying! The reason for watching the movie is Anna May Wong. The first female Asian film star, Hollywood didn't know what to do with her except casting her in supporting roles as an exotic. She had to go to England to get better roles like PICADILLY and her performance as the ambitious Shosho who rises from scullery dishwasher to the toast of London is displays her talent to the fullest. The film came out when talkies were just starting so a dull prologue with sound was added to the film for release in the U.S. which is stodgy in comparison to the fluidity of the rest of the film. With Charles Laughton, King Hou Chang and Hannah Jones.