Pavement Butterfly

Pavement Butterfly (Großstadtschmetterling) is a 1929 British-German silent drama film directed by Richard Eichberg and starring Anna May Wong, Alexander Granach, and Gaston Jacquet. It was part of an ongoing co-production arrangement between Eichberg and British International Pictures.

The film was shot at the Babelsberg Studios in Berlin and on location in Paris, Nice and Monte Carlo. The sets were designed by the art directors Willi Herrmann and Werner Schlichting.

Synopsis
A Chinese dancer in the nightclubs of Paris, becomes involved with a Russian painter and becomes his model. She is persecuted by a man named Coco, accused of theft. Later, in the French Riviera she is at last able to prove her innocence.

Production
This is, after Song, the second of various collaborations of Eichberg with Wong.

Analysis
Analysing the evolution of the roles played by Wong in her career, Mayukh Sen wrote: "Her subsequent films with Eichberg broke her out of the typecasting that she’d faced in Hollywood. In 1929’s Pavement Butterfly, she played a Chinese dancer who, despite the title’s suggestion, was more of a self-possessed vamp than a passive wallflower."