The Hollywood Daughter

Alcott (A Touch of Stardust; The Dressmaker), who is actually journalist Patricia O'Brien, uses her research skills to great advantage in this 1950s coming-of-age story, told from the point of view of Jesse Malloy, a young girl growing up in Hollywood. Her father is a studio PR executive trying to keep Ingrid Bergman's illicit romance with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini from damaging her box-office appeal; her mother is a devoted Catholic with secrets of her own. It's the era of McCarthyism and strict censorship promoted by the Catholic Church, and the resulting paranoia has a destructive impact on not only the studio system and its stars but also on Jesse and her parents' troubled marriage. Alcott is clearly a devoted movie fan, and her ending is something out of a classic film. Her technique of setting her characters against the backdrop of real events is largely successful owing to an engrossing plot and sympathetic protagonists.