Glamour and Crime: The London Nightclub in Silent Film

Abstract

This chapter discusses the London nightclub in British films of the 1920s. Nightclubs were illegal spaces which flourished after World War I when legal restrictions were loosened. In public discourse, nightclubs functioned as dangerous spaces that led innocent people (mainly women) to temptation and vice. Despite their illegality, nightclubs were constantly kept in the public eye through police actions, newspaper reports and their depictions in film. Throughout the 1920s the nightclub gradually became more accepted and legitimised, and by the end of the decade they had become a staple of London’s night-time economy. Cinema reflected this dual role of the London nightclub as space for pleasure and space for vice. This chapter uses E.A. Dupont’s film Piccadilly (1929), as well as the lesser-known texts Maisie’s Marriage (1923), The Pleasure Garden (1925) and The Wrecker (1929) to explore the interwar nightclub as a historically and culturally specific space. London nightclubs in 1920s British films are spaces of leisure, but vice and crime always occurs in their margins—in the streets, offices, and other spaces that surround them. Nightclubs were a uniquely modern space in 1920s London, encapsulating the era’s quest for new music, dance, and morals. Cinema was a popular form of entertainment in the 1920s, but clubs and cinema did not sit comfortably together. By investigating this intersection, we reach an understanding of how cinema interacted with and influenced public discourse on a contested space.