History Film / Anastasia

''Anastasia'' is a 1956 film starring Creator/IngridBergman, Creator/YulBrynner, and Helen Hayes. It was based on a play of the same name, originally written in French by Marcelle Maurette and adapted to English by Guy Bolton. The movie was directed by Anatole Litvak with a screenplay by Arthur Laurents.

After an OpeningScroll briefly explains the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Revolution]] and [[DidAnastasiaSurvive the rumored survival of the Grand Duchess Anastasia]], the movie opens in Paris during TheRoaringTwenties. Exiled White Army general Sergei Bounine (Brynner) is looking for a woman he can pass off as the lost Anastasia. He thinks he's found just the woman in Anna Koreff (Bergman), an amnesic waif who has spent years wandering from madhouse to madhouse, finally ending up in Paris after a long journey which apparently began somewhere in Eastern Europe. Anna at first refuses to participate in Sergei's scheme, but she agrees to go along with it when she's reminded that she has nowhere else to go. Sergei teaches Anna to be ladylike before taking her to meet the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanova (Hayes) in Copenhagen. But what if Anna and Sergei have accidentally fallen in love along the way?

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/anastasia56.jpg]]

* OperationJealousy: Anna goes out with Paul con Haraldberg and delete with him not just because she finds him charming, but also because she is in love with Bunin but he CannotSpitItOut.

* AmnesiacHero: Anna

* PygmalionPlot: Sergei and Anna
* QuestForIdentity: Anna wants to find out who she is

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Again, not as bad as the 1997 animated version, but that's a very low bar. The best that can be said is that the Russian Revolution occurs off-screen in apparently the same way as it happened in real life, Anna is never confirmed for sure to be Anastasia although the movie obviously wants us to think that she is, the Dowager Empress Marie is accurately portrayed as living in Copenhagen rather than Paris, and there is no undead Rasputin involved in the story. Even so, the movie plays fast and loose with the life of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anderson Anna Anderson]], which it is clearly based on (the movie's Anna even uses the name "Anna Anderson" as an alias at one point). In real life, Anna Anderson never met, let alone won over, the Dowager Empress Marie. And apart from them, basically everyone else in the film, including General Sergei Bounine and Prince Paul von Haraldberg, are entirely fictional characters.

This film, along with all of the other works based on tales of Anastasia Romanov's survival, became HistoryMarchesOn when discoveries of the Romanov remains in 1991 and 2007 proved conclusively that Anastasia died along with her family in Yekaterinburg in 1918.

After an OpeningScroll briefly explains the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Revolution]] and the rumored survival of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the movie opens in Paris during TheRoaringTwenties. Exiled White Army general Sergei Bounine (Brynner) is looking for a woman he can pass off as the lost Anastasia. He thinks he's found just the woman in Anna Koreff (Bergman), an amnesic waif who has spent years wandering from madhouse to madhouse, finally ending up in Paris after a long journey which apparently began somewhere in Eastern Europe. Anna at first refuses to participate in Sergei's scheme, but she agrees to go along with it when she's reminded that she has nowhere else to go. Sergei teaches Anna to be ladylike before taking her to meet the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanova (Hayes) in Copenhagen. But what if Anna and Sergei have accidentally fallen in love along the way?

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Again, not as bad as the 1997 animated version, but that's a very low bar. The best that can be said is that the Russian Revolution occurs off-screen in apparently the same way as it happened in real life, Anna is never confirmed for sure to be Anastasia although the movie obviously wants us to think that she is, the Dowager Empress Marie is accurately portrayed as living in Copenhagen rather than Paris, and there is no undead Rasputin involved in the story. Even so, the movie plays fast and loose with the life of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anderson Anna Anderson]], which it is clearly based on (the movie's Anna even uses the name "Anna Anderson" as an alias at one point). Anna Anderson never met, let alone won over, the Dowager Empress Marie. And apart from them, basically everyone else in the film, including General Sergei Bounine and Prince Paul von Haraldberg, are entirely fictional characters.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Again, not as bad as the 1997 animated version, but that's a very low bar. The best that can be said is that the Russian Revolution occurs off-screen in apparently the same way as it happened in real life, Anna is never confirmed for sure to be Anastasia although the movie obviously wants us to think that she is, the Dowager Empress Marie is accurately portrayed as living in Copenhagen rather than Paris, and there is no undead Rasputin or any other supernatural elements involved in the story. Even so, the movie plays fast and loose with the life of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anderson Anna Anderson]], which it is clearly based on (the movie's Anna even uses the name "Anna Anderson" as an alias at one point). Anna Anderson never met, let alone won over, the Dowager Empress Marie. And apart from them, basically everyone else in the film, including General Sergei Bounine and Prince Paul von Haraldberg, are entirely fictional characters.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Again, not as bad as the 1997 animated version, but that's a very low bar. The best that can be said is that the Russian Revolution occurs off-screen in apparently the same way as it happened in real life, Anna is never confirmed for sure to be Anastasia although the movie obviously wants us to think that she is, and there is no undead Rasputin or any other supernatural elements involved in the story. Even so, the movie plays fast and loose with the life of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anderson Anna Anderson]], which it is clearly based on (the movie's Anna even uses the name "Anna Anderson" as an alias at one point). Anna Anderson never met, let alone won over, the Dowager Empress Marie. And apart from them, basically everyone else in the film, including General Sergei Bounine and Prince Paul von Haraldberg, are entirely fictional characters.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Again, not as bad as the 1997 animated version, but that's a very low bar. The best that can be said is that the Russian Revolution occurs off-screen in apparently the same way as it happened in real life, Anna is never confirmed for sure to be Anastasia although the movie obviously wants us to think that she is, and there is no undead Rasputin involved in the story. Even so, the movie plays fast and loose with the life of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anderson Anna Anderson]], which it is clearly based on (the movie's Anna even uses the name "Anna Anderson" as an alias at one point). Anna Anderson never met, let alone won over, the Dowager Empress Marie. And apart from them, basically everyone else in the film, including General Sergei Bounine and Prince Paul von Haraldberg, are entirely fictional characters.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Again, not as bad as the 1997 animated version, but that's a very low bar. The best that can be said is that the Russian Revolution occurs off-screen apparently as it happened in real life, Anna is never confirmed for sure to be Anastasia although the movie obviously wants us to think that she is, and there is no undead Rasputin involved in the story.

* RiddleForTheAges: Is Anna really Anastasia?

* NapoleonDelusion: When Anna starts to think that she might actually be Anastasia, Sergei thinks it's this trope.

The movie marked Ingrid Bergman's Hollywood comeback after she had been virtually blacklisted for her adulterous affair with Creator/RobertoRossellini. She won an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for her portrayal of Anna. The movie was also nominated for the score by Music/AlfredNewman, but it lost to Victor Young's score for ''[[Film/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays1956 Around the World in 80 Days]]''. In 1997, ''Anastasia'' was [[{{Disneyfication}} very loosely remade]] as [[{{WesternAnimation/Anastasia}} an animated feature]] directed by Creator/DonBluth.

The movie marked Ingrid Bergman's Hollywood comeback after she had been virtually blacklisted for her adulterous affair with Creator/RobertoRossellini. She won an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for her portrayal of Anna. In 1997, ''Anastasia'' was [[{{Disneyfication}} very loosely remade]] as [[{{WesternAnimation/Anastasia}} an animated feature]] directed by Creator/DonBluth.

* DawsonCasting: In 1928, when the movie takes place, the real Anastasia would have been twenty-seven years old. Ingrid Bergman was forty-one at the time of filming.

The movie marked Ingrid Bergman's Hollywood comeback after she had been virtually blacklisted for her adulterous affair with Creator/RobertoRossellini. She won an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for her portrayal of the title character. In 1997, ''Anastasia'' was [[{{Disneyfication}} very loosely remade]] as [[{{WesternAnimation/Anastasia}} an animated feature]] directed by Creator/DonBluth.

* HammerAndSickleRemovedForYourProtection: Not ''quite'' as brazenly as the 1997 animated version, but nevertheless the movie steers pretty clear of the politics of the Russian Revolution.

''Anastasia'' is a 1956 film starring Creator/IngridBergman, Creator/YulBrynner, and Helen Hayes. It was based on a play of the same name, originally written in French by Marcelle Maurette and adapted to English by Guy Bolton. The movie was directed by Anatole Litvak with a screenplay by Arthur Laurents. In 1997, it was [[{{Disneyfication}} very loosely remade]] as [[{{WesternAnimation/Anastasia}} an animated feature]] directed by Creator/DonBluth.

After an OpeningScroll briefly explains the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Revolution]] and the rumored survival of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the movie opens in Paris during TheRoaringTwenties. Exiled White Army general Sergei Bounine (Brynner) is looking for a woman he can pass off as the lost Anastasia. He thinks he's found just the woman in Anna Koreff (Bergman), a amnesic waif who has spent years wandering from madhouse to madhouse, finally ending up in Paris after a long journey which apparently began somewhere in Eastern Europe. Anna at first refuses to participate in Sergei's scheme, but she agrees to go along with it when she's reminded that she has nowhere else to go. Sergei teaches Anna to be ladylike before taking her to meet the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanova (Hayes) in Copenhagen. But what if Anna and Sergei have accidentally fallen in love along the way?