Piccadilly

The relationship between celebrity and the public in Piccadilly shares a great deal with the film's relationship with its audience. Our gaze in the film shifts from character to character (namely Mabel and Shosho) depending on their own celebrity status – the unfolding of this narrative is much like the search for gossip, and as a way of establishing a narrative in film, is to say the least an intriguing one.

The film's narrative is established through gossip. The film's first shot depicts two women discussing Vic and Mabel, the "talk of the town". One woman is shown telling this to the other. This, as an opening to the film, engages the audience through positioning them as the listener in this conversation. These characters are established from a distance – even before we have seen Vic and Mabel on screen, they become an object of interest. The introduction of these characters, through the fashion of gossip, indicates to the audience their potential interest to them. Our eyes are placed on Vic and Mabel as the pair to watch – and soon, when this is shown to be untrue, the narrative takes a step further in its development.

Our gaze upon Vic and Mabel is first established by shots of them dancing alone on the dance floor. Previously, we are shown shots of a hugely populated dance floor. In a silent film, establishing characters on screen without spoken dialogue relies heavily upon images. This is such an example. When we are shown Shosho for the first time, she is treated by the camera with an intimacy that no character in the film receives, and one that is unusual for film at the time. The emulation of the hand-held camera "look" would have been atypical for pieces of cinema of this calibre, and so would have marked the audience's view of Shosho profoundly. As we are shown the women surrounding her, many women populating a single shot, we are shown that she is special, and through the hypnotised expressions they hold, we are shown that she is exotic.

Exchanges that take place in the film behind closed doors are the film's scenes of high drama – romances ending, romances flourishing, the intensity of Shosho's rivalry with Mabel – are contrasted to scenes in which there are many. The audience are made to feel as though they are insiders to gossip – witnessing affairs between those who are gossiped about, the celebrities, affairs that are not visible from the outside.

In continuing with the film's representation of celebrity characters as individuals rather than one of the many, Shosho's ethnicity acts as a marker to single her out from the crowd. In the scene in which she dances for the public in her exotic costume, though the shot is populated by many, the audience's gaze is directed towards Shosho. However, having many within the shot and Shosho in the centre implies that she is public property.

Piccadilly is a strange natured film. Heavily focused on celebrity, the film indulges its audience in the kind of fascination they would have with the celebrity in the everyday – a distant one, one with an eagerness for access through gossip – while engaging them with the intimacy of the celebrities' everyday. The audience is allowed to break through the barrier of privacy in this film, and as a result Shosho becomes a prize of exploitation.