Piccadilly

With: Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, Jameson Thomas, Cyril Ritchard and Charles Laughton. Original Screenplay: Arnold Bennett. Art Direction: Alfred Junge. New Score by Neil Brand. Restored 2003: British Film Insitute.

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. Now, with this gorgeous restoration of Piccadilly and its first distribution in the US since 1929, audiences will fall under the spell of the bewitching Anna May Wong!

Bonus Features

Original Filmed Intro to 1929 Sound Version (5 minutes).

Video documentary, Neil Brand on the composing of the score for Piccadilly (20 minutes)

Extensive Stills Gallery courtesy of the British Film Institute and Cinematheque Suisse

Original 1929 British press kit

Milestone press kit (downloadable as DVD-rom)

"Five Authors in Search of Anna May Wong" (downloadable as DVD-rom)

Video excerpts from 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 and author Karen Leong's indroduction to the film.

Liner notes by film historian Zhang Zhen