Themes: Inheritance at Stake, Assumed Identities, Crowned Heads
Main Cast: Claire Bloom, Rex Harrison, Susan Lucci, Omar Sharif, Amy Irving
Release Year: 1986
Country: US/IT
Run Time: 195 minutes
Plot
This two-part TV movie recounts the life of Anna Anderson, who until the day she died at age 82 insisted that she was really Anastasia Romanov, daughter of Czar Nicholas. Anna first makes her claim in 1920, when she is an inmate in a Berlin asylum. Her story of escape from the Bolsheviks who killed the rest of her family in 1918 seems so vivid that many Russian expatriates are willing to believe her. The film concludes in 1928, with Anna restating her claim before the surviving Romanovs living in New York. Amy Irving plays the leading character in a lady-or-the-tiger fashion, so that we never know if she truly swallows her own tale or if she's merely a clever charlatan. Olivia DeHavilland, Rex Harrison, Claire Bloom, Omar Sharif and Susan Lucci co-star in this opulent, location-filmed production, which originally aired on December 7 and 8, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Jane Robinson - Costume Designer, Lucie Lichtig - Continuity, Marvin J. Chomsky - Director, Petra Von Oelffen - Editor, Laurence Rosenthal - Composer (Music Score), Nicholas D. Knowland - Cinematographer, Marvin J. Chomsky - Producer, James Goldman - Screenwriter, Marcelle Maurette - Play Author
The film revolves around Anna Anderson, who truly believes that she's Anastasia Romanov, daughter of Nicholas II of Russia. Anna first tells her story in the 1920s when she is an inmate in a Berlin asylum. Her story of escape from the Bolsheviks who killed the rest of her family in 1918 seems so vivid that many Russian expatriates are willing to believe her. She slowly gains more trust but also more people who don't believe her. It's never revealed if she really is the daughter of the Tsar.
