History is often written with an ink of blood, and if one can't ignore the crimes committed by the Tsar Nicholas II, it takes a heartless penmanship to rewrite the execution of the Imperial family as a pragmatic necessity rather than an act of needless cruelty. In other words, which sane and sound mind can accept that four young girls and an adolescent boy would perish by firing squad bullets on a dark isolated cave? Wouldn't we wish to believe there were survivors?
Legend wanted that emotional vacuum to be filled by the Grand Duchess Anastasia but science put an end to all speculative fantasies when it showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that Anna Anderson had no Romanov DNA, still, the point is here: we *wanted* to believe that she survived. Emotions are involved here, not reason, that's pretty good material for a story and that's the soul of the original play by Marcelle Maurette about a young suicidal woman groomed by opportunistic Russian swindlers to pass as the Tsar's surviving daughter.
The play is set in 1928, after the grieving of the fallen Empire had reached the resignation stage, and when former General Sergei Boubin (Yul Brynner) finds Anna, the mad house escapee wandering in Paris, looking for a spot to drown her sorrow and herself in the process, it's not humanity that motivates him, it's not even the mere possibility that she could be the princess that raises his interest but the the potential claimant of one million pounds in the Bank of England belonging to her family, such a fortune is worth saving a woman and lying about her identity.
These shady motives aren't hidden at all and there are reasons for that: we know from the get-go that we're dealing with crooks, despite the majestic presence of Brynner, one should look at the trio he forms with Chernov (Akim Tamiroff) and Petrovin (Sacha Pitoëff) as 'civilized gangsters'. Secondly, given all their efforts to fill the fading memory of Anna with resourceful information, we know that she doesn't believe it either but she has no alternative. She's a victim-accomplice so to speak and at that point of the review, I can't go on without praising (and praising is an understatement) the intensity of Ingrid Bergman as Anna, her performance -as movie buffs know- earned her a second Oscar-nominated win after her role as another woman under a troubling influence in "Gaslight".
Which makes me believe there's a sort of natural disposition in Bergman to play women overwhelmed by so many internal demons that any step, any choice, any word, can push her further down in the very descent into madness she tries to escape from. The harder she does and the quicker she's pulled back into the very game that threatens her own sanity. While it was love in "Casablanca", mental sanity in "Gaslight" or family vs. Career in "Autumn Sonata", "Anastasia" offers the most harrowing conflict: identity with again, Anna as both part and outsider in the scheme because pretending to be Anastasia would at least provide her an identity to hook on, and not the least. She has good reasons to commit bad things, and that -too- is good material for a story.
That she doesn't know who she is is the best guarantee that the con might work, as says Boubin: no one can prove who she is not if they don't know who she is. And given the inner vulnerability of Anna and the state of starvation and fatigue she was found in, they knew she couldn't refuse an act that would provide her -with an identity- food, a room and a life. There's a sort of Faustian deal in the opening act that makes Anna a rather tragic character and her outbursts of nervous laughs and cries more than Oscar-baity moments, but genuine expressions of sincerity that only Bergman could play without a false note. Her acting is forceful and poignant and heart-wrenching that it even makes us forget that she was 13 years older than the princess she supposedly looked like. In a sort of meta-referential way, she challenges our own suspension of disbelief as she does with the persons who knew the Tsar's family. We believe because we want to, emotions, not reasons again, so through our own appreciation of Bergman we can understand the effect of her own character.
And "Anastasia" is truly a character-driven story, we don't care much about the inheritance and during the middle-act, it's relegated to a sort of McGuffin level when the real mission is to convince Empress Marie Feodorovna to meet her 'granddaughter'. Her endorsement would change the tide in the right direction but the old dowager exiled to Denmark and played with stern sensitivity by Helen Hayes, would have none of it... and it's all in the way she's getting more and more intrigued by that woman who dares have a resemblance with Anastasia that we get to the emotional core of the film.
Now, "Anastasia" is certainly more remembered for marking the triumphant come-back of Ingrid Bergman after her Hollywood blacklisting but I doubt the film was ever considered a classic to begin with. Still, this is a well-costumed merry-go-round of emotions spinning around the identity axis, conveyed by a Bergman at the top of her form, in this enjoyable ride of ups-and-downs orchestrated by a competent director who knows how to dispose his characters and use Russian music in the background allowing Brynner to demonstrate his talent at the guitar and pay a tribute to his ancestry.
But truly this is Bergman's movie and it gratifies us with one of the best acted sequences ever, between Hayes and Bergman, one that covers such a wide range of emotions it's not a roundabout but a rollercoaster of tears proving that it's all about suspension of disbelief driven by the viewer's inclination to let emotions dictate his reaction. Isn't that the essence of cinema after all?
Legend wanted that emotional vacuum to be filled by the Grand Duchess Anastasia but science put an end to all speculative fantasies when it showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that Anna Anderson had no Romanov DNA, still, the point is here: we *wanted* to believe that she survived. Emotions are involved here, not reason, that's pretty good material for a story and that's the soul of the original play by Marcelle Maurette about a young suicidal woman groomed by opportunistic Russian swindlers to pass as the Tsar's surviving daughter.
The play is set in 1928, after the grieving of the fallen Empire had reached the resignation stage, and when former General Sergei Boubin (Yul Brynner) finds Anna, the mad house escapee wandering in Paris, looking for a spot to drown her sorrow and herself in the process, it's not humanity that motivates him, it's not even the mere possibility that she could be the princess that raises his interest but the the potential claimant of one million pounds in the Bank of England belonging to her family, such a fortune is worth saving a woman and lying about her identity.
These shady motives aren't hidden at all and there are reasons for that: we know from the get-go that we're dealing with crooks, despite the majestic presence of Brynner, one should look at the trio he forms with Chernov (Akim Tamiroff) and Petrovin (Sacha Pitoëff) as 'civilized gangsters'. Secondly, given all their efforts to fill the fading memory of Anna with resourceful information, we know that she doesn't believe it either but she has no alternative. She's a victim-accomplice so to speak and at that point of the review, I can't go on without praising (and praising is an understatement) the intensity of Ingrid Bergman as Anna, her performance -as movie buffs know- earned her a second Oscar-nominated win after her role as another woman under a troubling influence in "Gaslight".
Which makes me believe there's a sort of natural disposition in Bergman to play women overwhelmed by so many internal demons that any step, any choice, any word, can push her further down in the very descent into madness she tries to escape from. The harder she does and the quicker she's pulled back into the very game that threatens her own sanity. While it was love in "Casablanca", mental sanity in "Gaslight" or family vs. Career in "Autumn Sonata", "Anastasia" offers the most harrowing conflict: identity with again, Anna as both part and outsider in the scheme because pretending to be Anastasia would at least provide her an identity to hook on, and not the least. She has good reasons to commit bad things, and that -too- is good material for a story.
That she doesn't know who she is is the best guarantee that the con might work, as says Boubin: no one can prove who she is not if they don't know who she is. And given the inner vulnerability of Anna and the state of starvation and fatigue she was found in, they knew she couldn't refuse an act that would provide her -with an identity- food, a room and a life. There's a sort of Faustian deal in the opening act that makes Anna a rather tragic character and her outbursts of nervous laughs and cries more than Oscar-baity moments, but genuine expressions of sincerity that only Bergman could play without a false note. Her acting is forceful and poignant and heart-wrenching that it even makes us forget that she was 13 years older than the princess she supposedly looked like. In a sort of meta-referential way, she challenges our own suspension of disbelief as she does with the persons who knew the Tsar's family. We believe because we want to, emotions, not reasons again, so through our own appreciation of Bergman we can understand the effect of her own character.
And "Anastasia" is truly a character-driven story, we don't care much about the inheritance and during the middle-act, it's relegated to a sort of McGuffin level when the real mission is to convince Empress Marie Feodorovna to meet her 'granddaughter'. Her endorsement would change the tide in the right direction but the old dowager exiled to Denmark and played with stern sensitivity by Helen Hayes, would have none of it... and it's all in the way she's getting more and more intrigued by that woman who dares have a resemblance with Anastasia that we get to the emotional core of the film.
Now, "Anastasia" is certainly more remembered for marking the triumphant come-back of Ingrid Bergman after her Hollywood blacklisting but I doubt the film was ever considered a classic to begin with. Still, this is a well-costumed merry-go-round of emotions spinning around the identity axis, conveyed by a Bergman at the top of her form, in this enjoyable ride of ups-and-downs orchestrated by a competent director who knows how to dispose his characters and use Russian music in the background allowing Brynner to demonstrate his talent at the guitar and pay a tribute to his ancestry.
But truly this is Bergman's movie and it gratifies us with one of the best acted sequences ever, between Hayes and Bergman, one that covers such a wide range of emotions it's not a roundabout but a rollercoaster of tears proving that it's all about suspension of disbelief driven by the viewer's inclination to let emotions dictate his reaction. Isn't that the essence of cinema after all?