Archive for the ‘movies’ Tag
The cinematic worlds created in 1940s Hollywood collide with the realities
of World War II and personal battles of the characters in Anthony Marra’s Mercury
Pictures Presents.
After her father is arrested for his anti-fascist writings and imprisoned in
an Italian penal colony, young Maria immigrates with her mother from Rome to
Los Angeles. The move does nothing to assuage the guilt she carries for
inadvertently alerting authorities to her father’s political transgressions.
Years later she’s hired at Mercury Pictures, a second-rate movie studio, where
she becomes an associate producer.
Marra incorporates multiple storylines tied together by Maria and Mercury
Pictures. Numerous characters populate the novel; most have emigrated to escape
persecution in their home countries. All, perhaps especially Maria,
try to reinvent themselves. Humor, irony and pathos merge as they navigate new
lives despite their status as second-class residents while making propaganda
films to support the war effort.
Much of the story is set in Hollywood/Los Angeles, but other locales
prominently figure in the epic Marra crafts, including San Lorenzo, Italy,
where Maria’s father lives out his days. The Utah desert is a surprising setting:
where, during the war, a crew from Mercury recreates German village to film a
war scene.
All of the characters are nuanced and interesting. They’re talented and
ambitious. These include Maria’s Chinese-American boyfriend; the German
miniaturist; the Italian cinematographer and the Jewish studio head, among
others. None are caricatures and all face some form of prejudice, much of which
is anticipated, some unexpected.
Mercury Pictures Presents
Four Bookmarks
Hogarth, 2022
416 pages
The land of Oz serves as the backdrop in Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts, but it’s more than a look behind the green curtain where the wizard was hiding.
The novel’s timeline alternates between 1938 when filming on the MGM classic took place and the life of Maud Baum, whose husband Frank authored the beloved series.
Beginning in 1871, this novel, based on fact, chronicles Maud’s childhood as the daughter of a suffragette, her experience at Cornell University where she was one of 19 women in a class with more than 200 men, and how she came to meet, then marry Baum.
The chapters set in 1938 show Maud striving to impress upon the movie’s power team the importance of staying true to her husband’s book. This, she’s convinced, depends on Judy Garland being able to project Dorothy’s innocence and hope. Maud sees this threatened by the movie studio’s efforts to control Garland through a regimen of diet and sleeping pills. Thus, Maud reaches out to protect the young actress.
The chapters concentrating on Maud’s life are a glimpse into the whimsical nature of her husband, the efforts for women’s right to vote, hardscrabble life on the North Dakota plains and her struggle to find meaning in her own life.
Letts deftly defines the various time frames and landscapes. Even though readers know the ultimate success of the movie, it’s Maud’s growth that is most captivating. How Frank came to write the Oz stories their popularity merely provides the framework.
Finding Dorothy
Four Bookmarks
Ballantine Books 2019
351 pages
Beautiful Ruins is a cinematic novel. It’s easy to imagine this story playing on the silver screen. It spans years and continents, relies heavily on the relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and features a strong connection to the movie industry. At its core, this is a love story, and a beautiful one at that.
Jess Walter’s tale involves a young actress, Dee, who arrives in an isolated Italian fishing village on the Ligurian Sea, where she meets Pasquale the owner of the Adequate View Hotel. Dee has been sent from Rome, where she had a bit part in the filming of Cleopatra. Dee is also pregnant with Burton’s child. Although it may sound like a blurb from People magazine, Walter imbues his narrative with deep feelings, humor, interesting characters and a clear passion for romance.
However, just when it seems the story will settle in the fishing village (the most interesting place) or even Los Angeles (because of the Hollywood scene), several miscellaneous locales are introduced: Seattle, London, Spokane, Florence, even Donner Pass in Northern California. Walter includes an assortment of characters, none of whom, surprisingly, are superfluous. Added, to this mix are different time periods: the early 1960s, the 1800s, and something more contemporary. The myriad of people, places and eras at first seems disparate, but they actually are essential what makes this such an engaging work.
Ruins are most often associated with architecture. Here Walter incorporates them into the erosion, but not extinction, of human emotions.
Beautiful Ruins
Four Bookmarks
Harper, 2012
337 pages
The Blue Page Special 