Anastasia

Loosely inspired by the story of Anna Anderson, Anastasia is a lush romantic period-piece which saw Ingrid Bergman return to Hollywood. Her return was so welcomed and her trespasses so forgiven that Hollywood ended up giving her an Oscar as a form of kiss-and-makeup. (My personal choice would have been Deborah Kerr in The King and I, but Bergman does solid and admirable work here.)

Bergman’s transformation from suicidal amnesiac to glamorous princess is believable thanks to her tremendous gifts as an actress. Her lustrous appearance is enough to convince us that she is royalty in pauper’s clothing. And Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes give her great supporting work. Hayes’ performance as the Dowager Empress is particularly affecting for the amount of depth, sorrow and skepticism she brings to the role. Brynner’s is more of a straight-man to the emotional fireworks given off by the female co-stars, but he equips himself well and possessed a commanding, imperial presence on-screen.

While Anastasia may look great and provide a kind of literate and sophisticated studio package that rarely gets made anymore, it’s also severely lacking in exciting or interesting images. Anatole Litvak has a beautiful canvas to work with in Bergman’s face and the costuming and production design, but he prefers to just point-and-shoot in a manner that makes the stage-origins of the piece highly obvious. There’s no excitement or sweeping romanticism to the look of the film. This film needed a George Cukor or Vincente Minnelli to liven up the look and feel of the whole enterprise. Litvak did better camera work in City for Conquest, which has its problems, but proves that he could be a great visualist when he wanted to, but for some reason with Anastasia he decided that filming it like a play was a decent enough choice.

The other major obstacle to getting through Anastasia is that the script has clearly decided that this amnesic woman is in fact the long thought dead princess, yet it insists on trying to present a mystery over her true identity. Too often Bergman’s character reminisces on tiny details that no one could learn from a history book, yet we’re still supposed to believe right up until the very last frame that she may not in fact be the princess. If the filmmakers had wanted to present this as more of a mystery it would’ve been better to create a larger sense of doubt in the viewer’s mind. Once every character becomes remotely convinced that she may be the genuine article any sense of doubt is shattered.

It’s always dubious to look to Hollywood for accurate history and Anastasia makes no pretense to even be remotely realistic, looking instead to craft a well-structured and slick romantic fable out of its various parts. For the most part it works thanks to Bergman, Brynner and Hayes delivering solid performances, even if the film as a whole is less than great. It’s certainly entertaining and has enough going for it to make it worth a look. How essential it is seems highly debatable, yet it has a highly fascinating backstory. One that may even be better than the actual film it produced.