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Anastasia Movie Review

Anastasia is a 1956 alternate history drama film directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner. It’s a flawed, but respectable period piece.

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“The poor have only one advantage;

they know when they are loved for themselves“

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A group of exiled Russians claim to have found the living daughter of the Tsar, presumed executed in 1918. This movie is pretty much the same as Don Bluth’s version of this story, though without the fantastical elements of course. I still prefer the animated version as it was more enchanting, but this one came rather close to that level of quality as it was so well crafted on multiple fronts.

The beginning dragged, that goes without saying. There are some major pacing issues here that prevented the film from becoming as engaging as it could have been. And the romantic elements simply did not register as they wanted to go for a romance between its leads, but never truly went there, thus the sparks weren’t felt at all.

With that being said, the entire second half of Anastasia is stellar filmmaking. This is where the story becomes really interesting and the introduction of the Dowager Empress shook things up for the better. I loved the entire ending that was pleasantly ambiguous and intriguing while this character worked because she got some great dialogue and a phenomenal performance from the great Helen Hayes who really killed it here. Why she did not get a supporting Oscar nomination for this role is beyond me.

But Ingrid Bergman did get nominated and she actually ended up winning an Oscar for the main role. This choice was a mixed bag for me. While she definitely excelled playing the role and she was grounded and particularly strong at emoting, I would have personally gone that year for Deborah Kerr’s excellent turn in ‘The King and I’, another Yul Brynner vehicle. Speaking of Brynner, he is excellent per usual, very charming and a true leading man.

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Anastasia benefits from actually having a Russian-American cast to a degree and an actor of that descent. This is something that today’s Hollywood shamelessly doesn’t follow. The directing is solid here, but the costumes, sets and cinematography as well as the score are all phenomenal. The movie is sumptuous and very easy on the eye.