Empire Theatre, New York - 28 November, 1951
Set in Germany in the early 1930s at the dawn of Hitler's rise to power.
Chris is a struggling young writer whose novel, A Am A Camera, concerns the events occurring around him. His girlfriend, Sally, is a flighty young woman leading a transient bohemian existence and flitting from one affair to another. Nevertheless, her relationship with Chris remains steady. When Sally learns that she is pregnant and refuses to inform the real father, whom she does not love, Chris offers to marry her. But she decides on an abortion in order to continue her "career" and her carefree life. Soon she becomes involved with an American playboy. The short-lived relationship ends, Chris gives up his hopes of Sally settling down and prepares to go back home - and Sally departs for the Riviera with yet another lover.
A secondary theme involves a romance between Natalia and Fritz, German Jews, whose plight hints at the catastrophe to come in the ensuing years.