Mercury Pictures Presents

The narrative shifts back to the Capitol Hill hearing. The committee summons Artie to testify, and he reads out a letter from the Republican Senator Gerald Nye, written after Ned made a $25 campaign donation. By the time Artie returns to Los Angeles, he is a political celebrity, whom the left admires and the right despises.

Maria returns home to Eddie, who warns her that Artie is making some powerful, dangerous enemies. Eddie once again fails to secure a much-desired role as a result of bigoted casting directors. Maria reflects that he is more “real” on-stage than off since he pours all of his deepest emotions into the parts he plays.

Maria learns from Eddie that Vincent took a job in the photography department at Mercury. She is angry and threatens to get him fired. Eddie is perplexed by this reaction, so she tells him about her father and his imprisonment. She concludes that she hates Vincent for the same reason that she hates herself. Eddie counters that maybe that is why she should show him some mercy.

The narrative perspective shifts to Eddie, who reflects on his artistic frustrations. A passing tour bus reminds him of the horse-drawn tourist buses that once conducted “safaris” through Chinatown when he was a boy. Eddie felt obliged to comply with the stereotypical vision they promoted to earn loose change from the tourists.

The narrative returns to Vincent. Maria is distant and hostile toward him, but paradoxically he feels that she is one of his main reasons to stay in Los Angeles. She is the only person in America who knows his real name and his past.

Transatlantic mail has ceased, so Vincent cannot learn what is happening in San Lorenzo. He speculates about Giuseppe’s fate and experiences guilty nightmares about Concetta Cortese.

He befriends the growing group of Jewish and dissident refugees whom the European Film Fund employs. One day, he finds himself at a table in the commissary with Anna Weber, Rudi Bloch (the screenwriter of Devil’s Bargain), and the actor Otto Hatszeghy. They drink champagne to celebrate Breen’s approval of Devil’s Bargain. Otto was cast in the Goebbels-Mephisto role, and he expresses his bemusement that, to survive in exile, he plays on-screen the very forces he fled and worries that taking the role creates potential troubles for his family.

The narrative perspective moves to Anna. When Otto asks her what she thinks of the film, she privately recalls that Rudi based the script on an event from her own life. The Nazi government offered her a series of important commissions for the Berlin Olympics, which she declined. Her first husband took the work in her stead, and she always regretted the decision in secret.

Anna and Rudi are in a complicated, 20-year relationship. She finds him maddening due to his insecurity and pomposity but finds his grace as a dancer breathtaking.

On the poster for Devil’s Bargain, everyone involved is listed as “John Doe.” This is partly in response to Otto’s request to remain anonymous to protect his family, but it is above all another publicity stunt. Maria is furious because she was promised production credits on the film and Artie left his own name unaltered. As a compromise, Artie changes the producer’s name to “Jane Doe.”

The narrative returns to the opening night of Devil’s Bargain. Artie refuses to let anyone clean up the cinema until the journalists have taken photographs. The cinema is packed, and the audience graces the film with rapturous applause.

In the morning, Mildred asks Artie if he heard about Pearl Harbor. He asks who the producer is, and she shrugs and quips, “It’s probably just Orson Welles causing A panic again” (208).

It is December 11, 1941, and Italy declares war on the United States. Annunziata digs up her vegetable plot because she has heard that the police are arresting Japanese gardening enthusiasts en masse in the belief that they use their gardens to signal Axis bombers.

Annunziata collects issues of the Italo Americano magazine that contain articles about Maria’s work. Mother and daughter hardly speak to each other anymore, but Annunziata decides to call her daughter and ask her to come and see her at the bungalow.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war bring about a swift reversal in Artie’s fortunes. The America First Committee disbands, and Artie is now hugely respected and sought after. The War Department contacts him because they want him to make indoctrination films for the recruits.

The attack on Pearl Harbor caught Ned unawares. He waited for Devil’s Bargain to flop so that he would have enough ammunition to push his brother off the board. He now mulls over a tempting offer from the Eastern National, which wants to buy Mercury outright. It plans to oust Artie and leave Ned at the helm of a much better financed operation. Ned encourages his brother to extend his credit line and give up more board seats.

Keen to capitalize on the anti-Japanese sentiment and jingoistic patriotism currently prevailing, Artie and Ned plan to work on a film entitled Tell ‘Em in Tokyo. They can’t find actors to play the Japanese villains, as the government is relocating growing numbers of the Japanese community to internment camps. Maria proposes Eddie Lu for the role and secures a lucrative salary for him.

Ernst points out that they will have to sack all of the “enemy aliens” (Germans and Italians) working in photography because of the growing fear of espionage. Artie agrees but feels a nagging sense of moral discomfort.

Maria dreads seeing her mother. As she leaves the studio, she spots Vincent walking and warns him that the studio plans to fire him the next day and that the government will restrict his movements. He responds that even though he traveled halfway around the world to escape fascism, he is in confino once more.

Maria offers Vincent a job in the Film Library, where she wants him to watch and prepare written summaries of enemy propaganda films.

As Maria drives across the blacked-out city, vigilante mobs move through Little Tokyo. She finds her mother preparing to burn her collection of the Italo American magazine because she heard that the FBI plans to compile an arrest list of prominent Italian citizens who subscribe to the publication.

Annunziata struggles to light the fire and asks Maria for help. Maria is moved and puts her arms around her mother. The restrictions on their movements as “enemy aliens” mean that Maria cannot visit again. The Enemy Aliens Property Board seizes Vincent’s camera.

Anna joins the exiles’ table at the commissary. The workforce present in the canteen has significantly declined as a consequence of military enlistment. Artie puts the exile group in charge of propaganda, in part because he is aware that their precarious political status means that the government is unlikely to draft them. To make the films, they intend to use a number of miniatures of Berlin that Anna made over the years. The war effort enlists the props department when it requisitions all of their rifles, and the set designers create a fake residential neighborhood, populated by actors, to camouflage the rooms of the local aviation plant.

Anna feeds a tortoise whose shell is decorated with rhinestones and shows her colleagues a scale model of a Berlin neighborhood. The studio develops special effects to integrate actors into miniature scenes. Anna starts a conversation with Vincent, in part because she wants to know something about the indoctrination films he is watching. They experiment with the camera and project Anna back onto the streets of Berlin.

The narrative shifts back to Anna’s childhood. Her parents are Marxist revolutionaries. She longs for bourgeois comforts. Dollhouses fascinate her, and she starts an apprenticeship with the miniaturist Herr Bergmann.

At the end of her apprenticeship, Bergman tells her that she should be an architect, not a dollhouse maker. She begins working in Bauhaus architecture, but she finds that, for all the idealism of the movement, it is plagued with sexism. She gets a job at UFA (Universal Film AG), the German film conglomerate.

Largely as an act of rebellion against her parents’ values, Anna marries the director Hasso Beck, and their son, Kurt, is born the next year. When Hasso joins the Nazi Party, he assures her that his motivations are purely pragmatic.

After Hitler becomes chancellor, many of Anna’s colleagues lose their jobs. Hasso offers her a big architectural commission for the Olympics, on the condition that she joins the Nazi Party. In a decision she will come to regret, Anna refuses and leaves him.

Anna agrees to marry Walter, a Jewish friend and former colleague, so that he can transfer his share of his business over to her and Nazi citizens cannot forcibly buy him out. When he learns that Anna married a Jew, Hasso sues for custody of Kurt and wins. Anna seeks out her estranged parents. When she reaches their apartment, she learns that the Nazis deported them to Dachau.

Hasso casts Kurt in a series of propaganda films, which Anna watches at the cinema as it is her only opportunity to see her son. After Walter is arrested and sent to a concentration camp, Anna sells her share in his company. As it is impossible to take money out of Germany, she asks to be paid in diamonds and hides them on the shell of the tortoise that she and Kurt kept at home.

She asks Vincent to see the propaganda films he is working on. She hopes to see her son again. Vincent recalls his debt to Concetta and agrees. As they leave the studios, snow falls for the first time in a decade. The snow is unexpected, as the government banned public weather forecasts. At first, Anna thinks they walked onto an outdoor film set.