Directed with avant-garde flourishes -LRB- like an amazing 360-degree pan around the vast nightclub set -RRB- by a German guest worker , E.A . Dupont -LRB- '' Variety '' -RRB- , and written with melodramatic savvy by the novelist Arnold Bennett , '' Piccadilly '' was one of the last gasps of the silent cinema , a form effectively dead by the time it opened in London in 1929 .