Mercury Pictures Presents
Mercury Pictures Presents is a multi-layered story told with humor and pathos. Marra has constructed a cohesive and very readable narrative set before and during WWII with exceptional characters to tell of life under fascist Mussolini and of Hollywood during the war. Twelve-year-old Maria and her mother flee Rome for Los Angeles, leaving behind her father, Giuseppe, who was arrested for anti-fascist activities and exiled to Calabria. The plot diverges into two storylines—one in Italy, one in Hollywood. Giuseppe struggles alone under captivity, while Maria, now 27, is an associate producer for Mercury Pictures. A variety of characters add vibrancy to the story: Artie, owner of Mercury Pictures, with his many toupees named and displayed in his office; Maria’s great-aunts, who each night “intended to pass in their sleep” and read the death notices each morning (“Some people have all the luck,” says Mimi); Ciccio, the funeral director, proposes to Mimi, who envisions the pleasure of tossing a cactus bouquet; Italian Inspector Ferrando, with his clothes covered in cat hair.
One theme running through the novel is of distorted reality. The nature of Hollywood is its artifice, but more so when the government pays Mercury to produce war propaganda. They begin “appropriating enemy propaganda” and staging war scenes to “look more realistic than the real ones.” Conspiracy theories require a “suspension of disbelief… as if reality took the crooked shape of the mind into which it was poured.” The result was Japanese Americans relocated to concentration camps on U.S. soil, and Italian “enemy aliens” relinquishing certain property, registering, and being confined close to home.
Marra’s prose turns from witty to touching with sentences stunningly well-crafted. In his descriptions, every word is important in painting a picture. His language is a delight to read and reread for its unique richness.
