Plot Intro
In 1917-18, the Russian people overthrew the oppressive and opulent Romanov royal family and eventually Bolshevik soldiers murdered the Tsar and Tsarina and their 5 children. Ten years later, rumours abound that the youngest daughter of the Romanovs, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, survived and is out there somewhere. A former White Russian General, Bounine (Yul Bryner) discovers a mysterious woman named Anna (Ingrid Bergman) who is just out of an asylum and has conflicting memories of her past. He decides to train her up in royal customs in the hope that both the public and European royalty, including Anastasia’s powerful grandmother the Empress Dowager (Helen Hayes) will be convinced that she is the Grand Duchess herself. If he does, he and his associates gain access to quite a substantial inheritance left by the late Tsar. If he doesn’t, he and his associates could end up in prison for fraud…
No, not that Anastasia (although you might be surprised - more on that later). It’s a mid ‘50s film inspired by Anna Anderson, the most famous of the Anastasia-wannabes. This was a rash of women coming forwards pretending they were survivors from the assassination of the Russian Romanovs, and Anderson was the one who seemed to get the furthest. DNA testing has now proved (long after death) that she was a phoney.
The film takes more of a non-committal stance, refusing to say whether this Anna (Bergman) is real or not, although it leans more towards her being the genuine lost Anastasia. I think this is inevitable as a film about a crook taking on a lonely broken old grand duchess and succeeding would be much less entertaining.
But what I thought was really interesting about this film is how much the animated 1997 film, also called Anastasia, borrows from it. It’s the same characters - the handsome schemer (Yul Brynner in the Dmitri role), Anna fresh out of the orphanage/asylum (our winner Ingrid in the Meg Ryan role) and while there’s no ghostly Rasputin, cute bat Bartok or Pooka the dog, scenes often play out in exactly the same way. At points I was recognising lines from it, just reworded in the ‘97 version, as if the writer was there with a thesaurus to change it up a bit.
Bergman disappoints here, she provides a fairly simplistic and at times overdone performance. Particularly as a ‘mad lady’ at the beginning, she’s irritating and I doubt there was much research that went into it. She’s out-acted by Helen Hayes (in the Angela Lansbury role) as a sad and lonely Dowager Duchess - and interestingly this was Hayes’ return to cinema after an absence when Hayes’ daughter sadly died.
But most impressive - and I cannot shout it loud enough - is Martitia Hunt. In the Bernadette Peters/Sophie role of the Dowager’s trusted lady-in-waiting, Hunt is magnificently funny, campy and quick-witted. She enlivens every scene she’s in and frankly by the end, I didn’t give a fig about Bergman or even Hayes - I wanted Martitia! Her presence lends the film a much-needed energy while never straying into pantomime.
It’s particularly worth noting that Hunt is best known for a very different performance. Her iconic performance as Miss Havisham in the David Lean Great Expectations is still upheld as the most influential portrayal of that character - and the one that every actress is still yet to beat. Even heavyweights like Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter have fallen short of the malevolent, creepy and heartbreaking performance Martitia Hunt delivered - a world away from the light, gossipy and campy turn she gives us in this film.
As a film, it’s fine - although I do think the ‘97 Anastasia delivered the same plot with more verve and polish. It’s another film that ends very abruptly (did film-writers just not know how to draw films to a close in this era??) and Bergman doesn’t particularly stand out, despite her Oscar win. This film belongs in fact to the two older actresses who sweep everyone else offstage - Helen Hayes and Martitia Hunt.
Martitia Hunt, see above. Whether tapping an attractive man on the shoulder with a parasol or gesturing footmen to leave a room, she imbues everything with a delightful joie de vivre that lifts the whole film.
Oddly it’s Ingrid Bergman for me. She turns in an okay performance (certainly not award-worthy) but we’ve already seen her this project in Gaslight where she was phenomenal. This doesn’t live up to her past work.
Mark
6/10
This is neither the late-90s/early-00s pop star, nor is it the 1997 animated film that not so much revised history as churned it up in a blender and fed it to the pigs. But, watching the 1997 cartoon multiple times did at least give me an interest and an awareness of early-20th century Russian happenings, and this very much helps for this film.
It’s quite a wordy piece although it does a better job of adapting from stage to screen than lengthy, over-written works such as Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Streetcar Named Desire. Anastasia remains brisk and lively even when the characters are bombarding the audience with lengthy Russian names and references to obscure members of European royalty (some of which, it turns out, are completely made up!). It is also helped along by some extremely vivacious side characters. Doug has mentioned Martita Hunt but I also enjoyed Akim Tamiroff and Sacha Pitoeff as Yul Bryner’s squabbling sidekicks. Bryner himself oozes charisma and sexy unscrupulousness, while Helen Hayes (one of our earliest Oscar winners) skilfully delivers some sassy one-liners as the Dowager Empress. At one point, Martita Hunt is excitedly describing the Grand Ball downstairs, to which the Empress retorts, “Yes, I can smell the moth balls”.
This means it is easy to understand what is happening and why, and a film that could have felt turgid and insipid is actually very pacy and watchable. But the downside is that character nuances and opportunities for some really powerful moments become lost in talking. The romance between Anna and Bounine is immensely unconvincing, especially bearing in mind how unpleasant he is to her (it’s very Henry Higgins/Eliza Doolittle) so their eventual elopement is mind-boggling and anticlimactic. Bounine’s background as an anti-communist White Russian isn’t really explored. The Empress briefly mentions his mistreatment in the army and we get the impression that, being the owner of a club in Paris, he is entrepreneurial but potentially still treated as a foreigner. But his exact motivations are muddled and unexplored.
Also, I would have liked the Empress herself to have been a much more tragic figure. The Empress Maria Feodorovna outlived 4 of her 6 children, lived in total denial that her son, his wife and five of her grandchildren were murdered in cold blood in a basement (the youngest, Alexei, was 13 years old). She was ostracised from the country she once ruled and never returned. But the script characterises her as a prickly, spikey old biddy. It’s a good job that the role is in the hands of Helen Hayes who effortlessly combines gravitas with comic timing. See our blog post on her to find out about one of the longest and most successful careers in performing arts.
I agree with Doug also that this isn’t Bergman’s best example of work. She’s very good although a bit maudlin sometimes here, and she’s basically playing the characters she always played (downtrodden, vulnerable European women eventually finding strength in herself). Her first Oscar-winning performance in Gaslight is much more powerful. She would go on to win one more Oscar in her career- Best Supporting Actress for Murder on the Orient Express playing yet another downtrodden, vulnerable European woman eventually finding strength in herself.
Interestingly, Anastasia was Bergman’s big comeback after she was heavily lambasted for her extra-marital affair with director Roberto Rossellini, who was also married. She was even denounced in the US Senate! It seems most of the public vitriol comes from the fact that Bergman’s persona (through the characters she plays) was very moralistic and pure. If she was known for playing whores and murderers, perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a shock. She and Rossellini eventually separated, although they had one child- actress Isabella Rossellini. Bergman continued to have a strong acting career, but sadly died on her 67th birthday in 1982 after a battle with cancer.
Anastasia may not be Bergman’s most powerful or memorable work, but it’s a colourful and fun piece and I was never bored. It’s perfect for a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon with plenty of blankets and hot drinks. You can enliven yourself afterwards by watching Meg Ryan battle Rasputin in the 1997 version. Don’t expect accurate history lessons from either film.
The scene when the Empress and Anna first meet is a great example of two titans of the classic Hollywood era (Bergman and Hayes) given space to just do what they do best for about 5 minutes.
The ending has no climax at all. Anna and Bounine suddenly running off together isn’t the denouement that the film was building towards and it seems to suddenly stop. I was actually rooting for Anna to shack up with the handsome and, more importantly, stonkingly wealthy Prince she dances with. He’s a frigging Prince for god’s sake, Anna!
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