Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Eric Stevenson This was different than I thought in that I thought it would be a musical. I think I had this confused with "The King And I". I thought they were made by the same creator, but I believe I'm wrong. I was aware of the death of Nicholas II of Russia and his family. I had no idea there were actually real people who claimed to be his daughter Anastasia or even thought they were. This movie features an amnesiac who meets these people who want her to impersonate Anastasia.The best scenes are when she's talking to the real Anastasia's grandmother. It's here that we're not really sure if she is the real Anastasia or not. I'm fairly certain the real one was proven to be dead. I will admit that the ending was really abrupt. That really could have been handled better. While not one of the best movies ever made, it certainly looks nice with a great performance from Ingrid Bergman. ***

Mark Turner Most of us know little about Russian history with much of it happening prior to the Communist takeover given little attention. We hear about Rasputin and Nicholas and Alexandria but not much, at least not as much as with other royal families. The only other story to receive much attention was that of Anastasia, the supposed lost daughter of the royal family who escaped execution and survived. Or did she? Many came forward to claim they were Anastasia but none as famous as Anna Anderson. Here story was the basis for this film and several others. Her claim to be the long lost daughter lasted for decades and it wasn't until DNA results confirmed or denied her claim that the results were determined. But what we have here is a story that revolves around that possibility.Yul Brynner, fresh from his successes with THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and THE KING AND I, stars as General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine, a Russian exile in Paris of nefarious character who will do anything to possess power and money. Displaced as he is we get the impression he is not above criminal activity and has been searching for just the right person to pass off as the long lost Anastasia.It seems he has found the perfect foil for his plan, a woman who had a past involving a stay in an asylum, Anna Koureff (Ingrid Bergman). Something in her background makes it seem that she could potentially actually be the woman sought, but the odds are against it. With a bit of training and assistance Bounine intends to pass Anna off as the real thing and as a result lay partial claim to £10 million laying in an English bank, leftover funds from the royal family.The only way to accomplish this is to pass Anna off as Anastasia to the Dowager Empress Marie Fedorovona (Helen Hayes) in Copenhagen. Hers is the determining factor that will decide if Anna is in fact Anastasia or not. With so many having tried to lay claim to the title it will not be an easy task.But we have more going on here underneath the surface as Hollywood is want to do. As Bounine trains Anna the pair become close to one another. Beneath his brusque manner and treatment of Anna and her confusion as to whether or not she is who he has told her, an affection begins to grow. It's subtle, nearly not on display, but there all the more time they spend together. Whether or not the end result will involve them as a couple is in doubt but the chance is there.The movie is not quite a romance but evolves into one coupled equally with the historical retelling of the search for Anastasia. This blending of fact and fiction makes for a slow moving film but an entertaining one at the same time. The film marked a comeback of sorts for actress Bergman who had fallen out of favor due to the strict moral at the time. Having had an open affair with director Roberto Rossellini in 1950 she had been denounced and looked down upon in American society. But her talent shown through and she worked her way back into the public eye with films like this one.Once more Twilight Time has done an excellent job with the transfer on display here. I've yet to see anything delivered from them that has fallen short. And like all of their titles this one is limited to so many copies so if you're interested get one before they're gone.

lasttimeisaw ANATASIA is a warm welcome vehicle for Ingrid Bergman, after her exile in Europe with her then- husband Roberto Rossellini, her first Hollywood feature since 1949, it won her a second Oscar.Directed by Oscar-nominated director Anatole Litvak, the story is loosely based on a historical event, in 1927, Paris, Anna Koreff (Bergman), a woman who is suffering from amnesia and distress, has a remarkable resemblance to the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, who is the youngest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II and may have miraculously survived the execution. Anna is coerced by a former Russian General Bounine (Brynner) and company, to impose Anastasia, so as to get an inheritance worth of £10 million. But to achieve that goal, Anna must get the approval from the exile Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna (Hayes), Anastasia's paternal grandmother, who firmly believes Anna is a hired hand like many others before and refuses to dredge up her wretched memories of the monarchy's abdication.Over forty then, it is quite a stretch for Bergman to carry off an allegedly 26-year-old Duchess, but Anastasia's supposedly decade-long trials and tribulations give her a free pass when she appears disheveled, jaded and frail, attempts to drown herself in the Seine. The proper transformation is where Bergman reigns supreme, her star-appeal and royal flair glamorously ignite the screen and she is so in her comfort zone to exude vulnerability while remaining the nuance of regal dignity. It is a standard performance out of her competence, its Oscar reward is an over-achievement.Brynner has a banner year in 1956, a one-two-three punch with THE KING AND I, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and this one, his blunt-talking eloquence and stern countenance mingled with an unspecifiable accent, are competent for a business-orientated mind, but the growing romance between Bounine and Anna, it is too understated to detect. And Helen Hayes, the picture is also a grandiose showcase for the First Lady of the American Theatre, her conversion from steely negation to emotional capitulation is so cliché but her sterling acting is abounding in pathos and reverberations, and upstages everyone else in the cast. Also, Martita Hunt is a flamboyant hoot as Baroness Elena von Livenbaum, the first lady-in-waiting of empress."The party is over, go home!" Empress Marie's imperious remark concluded this identity- discovering mystery with an anti-climatic finish, the thematic revelation (as corny as it is) of falling in love with a person as she is, sounds like a wishful thinking and feels as vague as the true identification of Anna Koreff, which the film cautiously toys with.A typical Hollywood excesses on the production scale, where all the sophistication yields to a simplified open-face romance, ANASTASIA is beguilingly banal and banally beguiling.

writers_reign ...if out there somewhere was a real Fair Lady transformed by an assassin's bullet into an amnesiac and requiring only expert coaching by a Pygmalion/Professor Higgins to blossom into a long-lost Russian princess. By pure coincidence this movie was released the same year (1956) that My Fair Lady opened on Broadway though so far as I can tell the parallels appear to have escaped virtually everyone. Bergman's last Hollywood film was the Australian-set Hitchcock turkey Under Capricorn seven years previously, seven lean years spent in banishment as penance for falling in love with and having a child by a man other than her husband, behaviour for which today she'd be lauded and this movie - and Bergman's performance - erases all memory of the Hitchcock debacle. Time and again it betrays its theatre origin, it was adapted from a successful Broadway play, and Bergman could hardly be bettered as the amnesiac who allows herself to be groomed by a trio of con-men led by Yul Brynner to pass herself off as Anastasia and almost as an afterthought picking up the ten million deposited by Czar Nicholas II for his children. There's even an obligatory 'graduation' set-piece which also parallels the one in My Fair Lady in which Anastasia and Eliza Doolittle respectively convince a collection of Royalty and Aristocrats of their lineage. This is top-of-the-range film-making with both Bergman and Helen Hayes at the top of their game.