Anastasia
DVD Release
- Release Date: 2003
- "Anastasia: Her True Story" as seen on Biography on the A&E Network
- Anamorphic widescreen (aspect ratio 2.35:1)
- Audio: English 4.0 surround, French mono, Spanish mono
- Subtitles: English, Spanish
- cc
- Audio commentary by John Burlingame, Arthur Laurents, James MacArthus, and Sylvia Stoddard
- Movietone newsreels (film premieres, award show clips, Romanov family footage)
- Restoration comparison
- Theatrical trailer
- Rating:




- Genre: Drama
- Movie Type: Period Film
- Themes: Amnesia, Inheritance at Stake, Cons and Scams
- Director: Anatole Litvak
- Main Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, Helen Hayes, Akim Tamiroff, Martita Hunt
- Release Year: 1956
- Country: US
- Run Time: 105 minutes
Plot
Anastasia is adapted from the popular stage play by Marcelle Maurette. The scene is Paris in the early 1920s. Ingrid Bergman plays a would-be suicide who is rescued by Russian expatriate Yul Brynner. Brynner's motives are far from altruistic; together with a group of Russian cohorts, he hopes to pass Bergman off as Princess Anastasia, the daughter of the late Czar Nicholas. If the conspirators are successful, they stand to collect the ten million pounds held in trust for Anastasia in the Bank of England. The biggest obstacle facing Brynner and company is the surviving Romanov empress (Helen Hayes), who must be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bergman is the genuine article. Anastasia represented Ingrid Bergman's return to Hollywood after several years' exile following her "scandalous" affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideReview
The classic treatment of the popular story of Princess Anastasia is this 1956 Hollywood version by Soviet-born director Anatole Litvak, based on a play by Marcelle Maurette. The lustrous Ingrid Bergman won her second Academy Award for her finely modulated portrayal of an amnesia victim who is manipulated by an exiled Russian White general (Yul Brynner) into posing as the long-lost daughter of the late Czar Nicholas. Anastasia marked Bergman's Hollywood comeback from her own exile in Europe following an overplayed personal scandal with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. The skeptical Russian Grand Duchess is played by the reliable Helen Hayes. Highly theatrical in its structure, this Anastasia is slick and entertaining, if not particularly attentive to historical nuances. Litvak uses his own experiences of fleeing both Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union to fashion a thoughtful, sophisticated study about the intertwining of political and personal deception. After Bergman's exquisite portrayal, the character of Anastasia was fated to decline, through it was later attempted by Amy Irving in 1986 and in a Don Bluth animated version in 1997. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie GuideCast
- Ingrid Bergman - Anastasia
- Yul Brynner - General Bounine
- Helen Hayes - Empress Dowager Marie Fedorovna
- Akim Tamiroff - Chernov
- Martita Hunt - Baroness von Livenbaum
Felix Aylmer - Russian Chamberlain; Sacha Pitoeff - Petrovin; Ivan Desny - Prince Paul; Natalie Schafer - Lissenskaia; Gregoire Gromoff - Stepan; Karel Stepanek - Vlados; Ina DeLa Haye - Marusia; Hy Hazell - Blonde; Olga Valery - Countess Baranova; Tamara Shayne - Xenia; Peter Sallis - Grischa; Paul Bildt; Katherine Kath - Maxime; Serge Pitoeff - Petrovin






