Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
This excellent novel starts as one thing – an exploration of a Hollywood studio during the second world war – and becomes a freewheeling consideration of the importance of art, human suffering, resilience and goodness as well as more contemporary concerns about immigration and identity. If all that seems a little worthy have no fear because Marra constructs a witty, fast paced narrative that ranges from America to Europe and back and forth in time. It’s a serious novel that wears its seriousness with a light touch.
Artie Feldman is the studio head of the eponymous Mercury Pictures who, during the tumultuous final years of the 1930s, presides over a company producing a stream of relatively cheap, conveyor belt B movies during the golden age of the silver screen. He is self-absorbed, a bit of a huckster, with a passion for the business. His Jewishness and predilection for movies that expose the brutality of fascist regimes in Europe make him a target for congressional committees wary of any attempt to bring America into the European conflict. After Pearl Harbour, though, Artie’s fortunes change overnight as the military identify Mercury Pictures as the right company to produce wartime propaganda flicks because of their track record of anti-fascism.
The first section of the novel seems something straight out of ‘My Girl Friday’ as Artie quick-wittedly banters with his personal assistant, Maria. She usually bests him in these verbal duels and plays a crucial role ensuring that Mercury Pictures keeps afloat. There is a wit and lightness here that the reader sinks into comfortably. However, Marra keeps changing the focus and keeps the reader on his/her toes – Maria despite her obvious skills, which Artie values, is unable to persuade him to give her the producer credits she deserves – the board, he tells her, wouldn’t put up with a woman in such a senior role. In the same vein, Eddie Lu, her Chinese American boyfriend and classically trained actor, is frustrated at having to constantly play stereotyped oriental villains. With the outbreak of war the ignominy intensifies as he becomes the go to guy for brutal Japanese officers. In these sections of the novel Marra looks at the interesting paradox in America where the country presents itself as the defender of freedom and democracy whilst hounding and interning anyone who looks suspiciously foreign. See what I mean about the shifting changes of tone and mood.
Gradually, Marra’s shifting focus falls on Maria. We learn that she is the daughter of a famous Italian barrister who is exposed as an opponent of Mussolini’s brutal regime and exiled, confinato, to San Lorenzo, an isolated, impoverished village. Maria’s energy and competence make her a vital element in the studio’s burgeoning wartime productions. Yet her status in the organisation as a woman and worse still an immigrant from a country now at war with America mean that her confidence is always tempered by a sense of insecurity. Part of her is also somewhere in San Lorenzo with a beloved father, Giuseppe, who seems beyond reach.
Part of us, the reader, is also in San Lorenzo as Marra seamlessly moves between Los Angeles and her father’s prison exile. Again, the mood in these Italian scenes shift constantly. There are richly comic passages featuring Eduardo the local police officer who has an impeccable crime solving rate based on the lyrical but false reports he writes. And then there is the hardships of Giuseppe’s political exile and the tension surrounding his efforts to escape. I won’t say more as there is an important twist, a brutal encounter with a visiting German officer and, at least a couple of moral dilemmas for Giuseppe and his young friend, Nino. Eventually, though, the world of San Lorenzo comes to Hollywood.
As well as the Hollywood and San Lorenzo settings the narrative steadily follows the progress of the allies advance across Europe, which involves Mercury Productions film crews capturing the story – and here there is an interesting exploration of the limits of war reportage. Almost as dramatic is the political manoeuvrings back in Hollywood as Artie finds his position as studio head threatened by his brother, the epitome of the money men who gradually begin to marginalise the influence of the artistic visionaries in the movie business. Again, though, Marra infiltrates his weightier storylines with amusing diversions about the tragic decline of silent movie stars forced to impersonate themselves as lookalikes for photo hungry tourists as well as farcical cruise scenes featuring Artie and his mistress.
This may sound as if Marra throws the kitchen sink into this novel and he does but there is coherence and, ultimately, a thoughtful, resonant novel. I imagine he wants to emphasise that America, a land of immigrants, has always had a real wariness of immigrants, especially at times of stress – World War II, the present day as China challenges American dominance? Yet he also wants to have fun. I think he succeeds in achieving both.