Under the Rainbow

In 1938 Kansas, Rollo Sweet climbs the shelter roof to fix the antenna. The ladder wobbles and he plummets toward an uncertain fate. This accident foreshadows a larger tension between glittering Hollywood dreams and the real risks that accompany them.

The dream shifts to Culver City, where a hotel near MGM becomes the hub of a microcosm of the world at play. Annie Clark and her assistant Homer manage daily pressures, while an Austrian duke and duchess arrive under guard with their Secret Service escort, and Kriegling and Nakomuri drift through the shadows alongside a swarm of Munchkin performers.

From the outset, the hotel scene is tangled by misread signals: Kriegling mistakes a photographer for his Tokyo contact, while Nakomuri assumes the hidden man must be one of the Munchkins. The misdirection feeds a growing sense that someone is playing a dangerous game behind the scenes.

An assassin trailing the Duke and Duchess murders Akido, a Japanese tourist, in a moment of chilling violence. The chaos prompts Homer to drag Kriegling into a studio costume and makeup shop as the night spirals toward danger.

The Munchkins' inebriated antics threaten to derail the production while the hotel hums with fear, suspicion, and frantic activity. The atmosphere tightens as everyone senses unseen danger around them.

Kriegling and Nakomuri close in on Annie, Thorpe, and the Duke and Duchess inside a hotel room, turning a private space into a pressure cooker. The sense of threat grows with every whispered plan and shadowed doorway.

Nakomuri uses his camera to threaten the killer, but a shot erupts and the would-be assassin and Nakomuri perish in a dramatic crossfire. The room falls silent as the true stakes of the night come into brutal relief.

Kriegling demands the map he believes is hidden in a locket on the Duchess’s dog's collar. Thorpe reveals the crucial detail: the map exists, and its path depends on a chase that starts within the hotel and spills onto the studio lot.

The Duchess’s dog darts for safety, dragging Kriegling into a high-stakes pursuit that threads the hotel corridors into the film studio. The chase disrupts filming and turns everyday spaces into a dangerous backdrop.

Kriegling grabs the locket and escapes toward a vintage bus, while Sweet pursues in a horse-drawn carriage across the studio lot. The dramatic chase weaves through sets and crowds, blurring dream logic with real danger.

The pursuit culminates in a spectacular crash that binds the fates of dreamers and schemers. The collision leaves a quiet, unsettled aftermath as the line between reality and fantasy thins further.

Sweet wakes back in Kansas, and the cascade of hotel intrigue is revealed as a nocturnal dream woven from the shelter residents’ lives. The reappearance of the dreamlike figures grounds his longing while hinting at a broader truth about Hollywood’s pull.

A bus full of little people arrives, signaling a new chapter in Sweet’s story and confirming his path toward Hollywood. He faces the future with a mixture of wonder and resolve as the dream lingers.