‘Anastasia’: Ingrid Bergman Stars as a Royal

NR| 1h 45min | Drama | 1956
The 1917 revolution overthrew Russia’s last Tsar, killing him and his family. Then, rumors emerged that his youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, had survived. A 1952 play dramatizes those rumors, as does the 1956 film that it inspired.
Then, what seems like another impostor shows up: Anna (Ingrid Bergman), disheveled, disoriented, and destitute. She’s just out from a mental asylum, and who’d once claimed that she was Anastasia.
Canny Bounine prevents Anna from jumping suicidally into the Seine, and takes her under his wing. Anna’s grateful, but wary of his schemes. She has nowhere to go, and so she agrees to be tutored to play Anastasia before his impatient funders pull the rug. The trouble is, her fractured memory seeps through his tutoring. She remembers things he hasn’t taught her and only Anastasia would know. Privately he wonders: Could she be Anastasia?
Anna fails to sway aristocrats who were close to the royal household, so Bounine aims big. Why not let Anastasia’s grandmother, the Dowager Empress (Helen Hayes), decide? To secure access to the reclusive empress, now in Denmark, they meet Prince Paul von Haraldberg (Ivan Desny), Anastasia’s cousin and childhood playmate, to whom she was betrothed as a teenager. Haraldberg isn’t convinced, but he’s seduced by the prospect of marriage and Anastasia’s inheritance. He tries to convince the Empress that Anna is bonafide. The empress rebuffs everyone. She’ll make up her own mind after meeting Anna alone.
Fluent in Swedish, German, Italian, and French, Bergman is a convincing Russian fugitive, winning the second of her three Best Actress Oscars for this role. Brynner was Russian-born. An accomplished guitarist, he performs the guitar recitals here, his widely recognizable imperious baritone on full display. Although only 5 feet tall, Hayes brings a towering finesse to her dowager empress.
Russian-born director Anatole Litvak became an American citizen after fleeing Europe to escape Nazism. He brings some of that haunting rootlessness to his portrayal of a hapless Anna. Several extras on set were real-life White Russian survivors of the Revolution. Couturier Cristobal Balenciaga designed Bergman’s costumes, including the spectacular gown she wears for the scenes in the opera house and grand ballroom.
Watch Bounine watching Anna, while he hums. When he’s preparing her to see the Empress, he admits he’s doing it for her sake. What’s unsaid? Money matters less to him than Anna does. When she’s complaining about being manipulated, he wordlessly kisses her hand. To him, she’s already “her Highness,” before anyone else acknowledges her as such. When they’re alone, and she’s had too much to drink, he doesn’t exploit her vulnerability. He enters her room, gently switches off the lights, and leaves.
Bounine expresses his love on the grand staircase, “I don’t give a hang about the money. I don’t care what your name is. I care what you are.” Pained that she’s now more attracted to the trappings of royalty than when she started out, he sneers, “Go on then, be a Grand Duchess … and marry a man who wouldn’t come within 10 feet of the altar if you were not an heiress.”