Mercury Pictures Presents

Mercury Pictures Presents is a tragi-comic historical novel, set between Mussolini’s Italy and Hollywood’s golden age. It was first published by Anthony Marra in 2022. Marra is the award-winning author of three novels and many short stories. Mercury Pictures Presents focuses on the experience of the immigrant community in Hollywood around the time of World War II and is an exploration of the complex relationship between life and art and the difficulty of maintaining moral and artistic integrity in times of political turmoil.

This guide refers to the first 2022 UK edition published by John Murray, Hachette UK.

Content Warning: The novel and this guide contain references to racist and anti-gay stereotypes, racial slurs, and suicide.

Plot Summary

Maria Lagana and her father, Giuseppe, spend their Sundays at the cinema instead of going to Mass. A defense attorney, Giuseppe has fallen on hard times under Mussolini’s regime, which stages show trials and systematically denies defendants the right to counsel. Giuseppe drafts defense statements for the wrongly imprisoned. While the father and daughter are watching Frankenstein one Sunday, blackshirts storm and set fire to the cinema. Maria is afraid for her father, and that evening, she takes his files out into the street to burn them. She is reported to the police, and Giuseppe is sent to a confino internment camp in Calabria, in a little village called San Lorenzo.

Maria and her mother, Annunziata, emigrate to Los Angeles, where they live with Annunziata’s aunts who run a trattoria. Maria integrates thoroughly into her new culture and pursues a career instead of a husband. Fifteen years later, she is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, a struggling production company that turns out B movies to limited success with an increasingly international staff of European refugees. The company is jointly owned by twin Jewish refugee brothers Artie and Ned Feldman. Maria is Artie’s right-hand operative, but she constantly feels frustrated professionally because she is a woman.

The American part of the narrative begins with Artie and Maria discussing his upcoming hearing before the Senate Investigation Into Motion Picture War Propaganda and his hopes to get his new film project, Devil’s Bargain, past the censors. The film tells the story of a director who makes a Faustian pact with the Nazi regime to make indoctrination films in exchange for funding to produce his magnum opus.

In San Lorenzo, Giuseppe saves a young boy named Nino Picone from drowning. Nino’s mother runs a photographic studio, taking passport photos for emigrants. The mother invites Giuseppe to live with them in exchange for tutoring her son. When Nino’s mother dies, Nino is sent to live with Concetta Cortese, whose large, burly son, Vincenzo, protects him from bullies.

With Giuseppe’s tuition, Nino wins a place to study law in Rome. Vincenzo becomes involved in organized crime and relocates to America. Nino grows increasingly frustrated with the fascist regime. Inspired by the work of Robert Capa, he resolves to travel to Spain to document the civil war as a photographer. He is arrested and sent back to San Lorenzo, this time as a prisoner.

Vincenzo returns from the US to collect his mother and finds Nino a prisoner. He resolves to help Nino and Giuseppe escape in a Nazi vehicle while Himmler is visiting San Lorenzo to oversee the excavations of Alaric’s tomb. Vincenzo is killed while trying to steal the vehicle, and the evidence leads the local police inspector, Ferrando, back to Picone Photography. On Giuseppe’s urging, Nino uses Vincenzo’s passport to escape to California.

Nino, who now goes by the name of Vincent Cortese, contacts Maria. She resents him for leaving her father behind. Much to Maria’s displeasure, Vincent finds work in the photography department at Mercury.

Artie humiliates Senator Nye at his hearing. There is a riot on the opening night of Devil’s Bargain, and the attack on Pearl Harbor the next day catapults Artie to celebrity status. The beginning of the war means that as Italian immigrants, Maria and Vincent are “enemy aliens,” limited in their movements. It also means that Vincent is no longer allowed to use a camera, due to fears of espionage.

Mercury Pictures is enlisted to help with the propaganda effort by making indoctrination films. Maria’s Chinese American boyfriend, Eddie Lu, suddenly finds himself with a wealth of professional opportunities playing Japanese villains. However, this casting frustrates him artistically and unsettles him morally.

Together with Anna Weber, a skilled miniaturist from Berlin, Maria and Eddie embark on a movie that promotes an alternative narrative. Eddie writes the script. Artie initially supports them, but when he comes under attack from Ned and the board, he pulls the plug on the project. Disillusioned, Eddie leaves Los Angeles.

Anna goes to work on a secret project at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. She helps rebuild a series of detailed reconstructions of a district of Berlin so that the army can prepare to firebomb the city. Realizing that the bombing is likely to cost her son his life, Anna shuts herself in one of the houses during the last bombing simulation.

Ned and the board oust Artie. Ned tries to blackmail Maria into staying on. He threatens to reveal his discovery about Vincent’s identity. With Artie’s help, Maria enables Vincent to return to Italy as an army war photographer.

In Calabria, Vincent shoots a staged re-enactment of the liberation of Castellalto. After Ned informs on him, the Italian police arrest Vincent and take him to Concetta Cortese to verify his identity. Concetta confirms that he is her son despite her hatred and resentment of him.

Artie and Maria set up a new venture, Jupiter Pictures. The Mercury board pushes Ned out shortly after Artie’s departure. Eddie Lu begins a successful career in radio drama.