This three hour film examines the lives of the two men responsible for the concept and production of the Statue of Liberty - French sculptor Frederic Auguste Berthold and American coppersmith Jack Marchand. Told as a dual story, the tale unfolds back and forth between each country. In France, Berthold gets a young model to pose nude for him to develop his sculpture. When he falls for her, his doting mother opposes the relationship. Meanwhile in America, the Jewish Marchand faces bigotry but is taken by into a business by a good-willed Irishman. There he weds the businessman's illiterate niece when she becomes pregnant, but carries on a platonic affair with a poetess. Eventually Marchand and his employer, along with a slave take on the construction of the actual monument.