Anastasia *** (1956, Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, Helen Hayes, Akim Tamiroff, Sacha Pitoeff) – Classic Movie Review 2650

Director Anatole Litvak’s 1956 movie brought Ingrid Bergman back to Hollywood for a triumphant return after a seven-year gap, unofficially blacklisted and apparently in disgrace with the American public over her extra-marital affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini and having a child out of wedlock. However, a Hollywood movie it may be, but it was shot in Copenhagen, London and Paris. 

Bergman was welcomed back to the Hollywood fold by her peers, who voted her to win an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in this glittering romantic historical entertainment about the pretender to the Russian throne.

Bergman plays Anna Koreff, a destitute, suicidal young woman who falls in love with the former General Sergei Bounine (Yul Brynner), an opportunistic Russian businessman who tries to pass her off as the Grand Duchess Anastasia, heir to the Russian throne. He’s one of a trio of Russian exiles in Paris who plot to collect £10million from the Bank of England.

He coaches her as a tsarina, but soon he comes to believe she is the real Anastasia because she is so convincing, persuading all the biggest sceptics.

The story is an embroidery of the true story, and merely inspired by the life of Anna Anderson, the most famous of the many Anastasia impostors who appeared after the death of the Imperial family in July 1918. The conspiratorial trio of Bounine, Boris Chernov (Akim Tamiroff) and Piotr Petrovin (Sacha Pitoeff) are purely fictional. As Hitchcock would have said: ‘It’s only a movie, Ingrid!’

Few audiences will care if it is more of a popular entertainment than a rigorous or truthful intellectual exercise when both the cast and Arthur Laurents’s screenplay (based on Marcelle Maurette’s stage play, adapted by Guy Bolton) have so much bounce and charisma.

Bergman is quite splendid in a most appealing, suitably enigmatic performance, earning her Oscar. However, even so, Helen Hayes, co-starring as the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, steals all the scenes she’s in, particularly the riveting central scene where she confronts Bergman’s character to find out if she’s a fake.

Also in the cast are Martita Hunt as Baroness Elena von Livenbaum, Felix Aylmer, Ivan Desny, Natalie Schafer, Gregoire Gromoff, Karel Stepanek, Ina De La Haye, Hy Hazell, Peter Sallis, Katherine Kath, Nora Nicholson and Tamara Shayne.

The story was explored again in Marvin J Chomsky’s 1986 TV movie Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and once more in Don Bluth and Gary Goldman’s 1997 animated feature Anastasia.

Ingrid Bergman was noticeably absent from the awards ceremony. Her friend and often co-star Cary Grant accepted the Oscar on her behalf. She also won a Golden Globe as Best Actress. Alfred Newman’s score was Oscar nominated.

The film-makers were unaware that the real-life character Anna Anderson was still alive and had to rush to her home in Germany to try to gain permission to use her name and story.

Anna Anderson’s handwriting was pronounced identical with Anastasia’s and medical experts found 17 points of similarity between her ear and the real Anastasia’s. Howerer, It was later discovered that she was not who she claimed to be when the mystery was solved through DNA examination of a small piece of tissue cut from Anna in an operation years before.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2650

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