ANASTASIA: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1956) Twilight Time

In honor of the Walt Disney Corporation’s most recent public announcement that, after decades of sitting on their own goldmine of Uncle Walt’s live-action film legacy, as well as to have since annexed the asset management catalog of the now-defunct 2oth Century-Fox (inexplicably rechristened 2oth Century Studios by Disney Inc.), Walt’s successors have reached a distribution deal with Grover Crisp and Sony Home Entertainment (whose home video model is decidedly more progressive and aggressive), we at Nix Pix have decided to revisit several Fox catalog releases, decidedly, requiring some immediate love and attention.

“What is history but a fable agreed upon?” – Napoleon I

What is Hollywood, but a dream remembered? The mores, mannerisms and machinations that allowed director, Anatole Litvak the opportunity to create such a delectably escapist confection as Anastasia (1956) are long gone. Ditto for that level of artistry required of such virtuosi as Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes, not to mention the film’s sublime supporting roster: a caustic, Felix Aylmer, devious Akim Tamaroff, and, ebullient Martita Hunt among them, doing what they did best. Anastasia could never be made today, not the least for the futility in the exercise affected by the 2007 discovery of human remains since presumed to that of Alexei and Anastasia – originally not among the other Romanov bones unearth nearly two decades earlier. Their absence for so long was essential in perpetuating the hopeful wish fulfillment that perhaps the youngest daughter and her brother had survived the hellish deluge and royal overthrow of 1917. Anastasia, so it was rumored, had gone on to live obscurely with a dashing young Bolshevik, empathetic to her plight and desperately in love with her. That Anastasia, the movie, has endured despite more recent revelations to the contrary, continues to cast its spell as an alternative theory to history. Much here is owed screenwriter, Arthur Laurents’ ability to tamper with our communal desire to dream away truth on a whim, even in the face of its unflattering verities. Does it really matter the real Anastasia did not survive? Only to the purest cynics on whose shattered resolve the balance of judgment never entirely fails to gel. The daydreamers and their broken hearts, however, are perennially ensconced in that fanatical belief and mythology, insidiously preyed upon by Hollywood’s dream factories as fodder, adding fuel to our fantasies.

The ill-fated affair of the Romanovs has been told and retold many times since the Russian Revolution, perhaps as the perennial appeal of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, our sentiments align in a common affinity for children of a slain father figure, recalling the pageantry of those bygone era through rose-colored glasses. Even as that majestic epoch has turned to dust, the remembrance of it is forever sheathed in an incalculable air of mystery, framed by these larger-than-life characters. The truth about the last Romanov dynasty has been ruthlessly obscured through time to suit alternative theories about the crime of their murder – justified under communism as a purge of politically corruptness. Well, at least this is how some would have us remember the Russian royals. In another famous flick about the fall of Russia, David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965), there is a poignant moment where Ralph Richardson’s seemingly resolute patriarch, withered by care and age, suddenly breaks down upon learning the news of the Tsar and his family’s bloody assassination. “What’s it for?” he whimpers, to which a more clairvoyant, if as sad-eyed Omar Sharif distantly replies, “It’s to show there’s no going back.”

Yet, Anastasia endeavors to do precisely this; mark a return – with an absence of some years – to the scene of the crime, making the faith of the fervent whole from this fractured past. At one point in Litvak’s fairy tale, Yul Brynner’s Gen. Bougnine openly admits to his conspirators they are not looking for the real Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna… only a reasonable facsimile to provide the naïve as well as the devout with their hopeful assurances the past can be brought back to life, even as they quietly abscond with the one-hundred-million-pound inheritance awaiting its rightful heir in the Bank of England. For clarity: that king’s ransom still lies in wait in a vault somewhere in Europe. But even by 1956, the sands of time had made it virtually impossible for anyone to either confirm or deny the various fakes paraded before the Dowager Empress in attempts to gain her approval and access to the money. Gradually, the yoke of communism’s silence on the matter lifted. Yet, there is still much that is shrouded in secrecy and debate, ironically, to perpetuate, rather than dispel, our insatiable need to perennially revisit this disturbingly dark chapter in Russia’s history.

Impressions of Tsarist Russia since emerged from under the iron curtain, and, in the spirit of former diplomat, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost, have been far less judgmental than those painted by previous regimes devoted to its suppression. Nicholas II, the last of the Imperial rulers, is now perceived as a more benevolent – though as flawed - patriarch to his peoples. For nearly a century he was only known to most as a tyrant in a narrative devoted to the obfuscation, nee bastardization, of his plutocracy. Yet, history and hindsight have a bizarre way of intermingling, and thus to generate a third romanticized alternative to either reality already irreversibly blurred. And lest we forget, time and history have since confirmed Lenin’s new order was as dire to the welfare of Russia’s citizenry as any Tsarist edict preceding it. Yet, even Stalin’s iron-fisted/closed-door policies could not prevent one rumor from proliferating throughout the catacombs and antechambers of Europe. And thus, the legend of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov lived on, almost from the moment news spread far and wide of the Romanov assassination and pretenders to the throne from every walk of life began to clamor for an audience with Nicholas’ mother, the exiled Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, living in Copenhagen. In the beginning at least, the dowager was desperate for news of her youngest grandchild, said to have escaped the bullet-ridden slaughter in that house of ‘special purpose’ in Yekaterinburg. But her optimism quickly soured when these imposters, ill-conceived and much too greedily anxious to acquire the sizable inheritance, created an absurd fervor outside of Russia for all things Romanov. Their ambitions would eventually turn Maria’s heart to stone.   

One such ‘imposter’ was Anna Anderson: an emotionally fragile pauper who nevertheless bore a striking physical resemblance to the real Anastasia, or rather, a reasonable facsimile sufficiently aged. Anderson possessed uncanny knowledge of certain irrefutable and very private facts about the royal household, only those who believed in her claim argued could not be known except through privilege. As such, Anderson was openly embraced and, in fact, financially supported by a sect of exiled Russian loyalists. With increasing frequency, Anderson was put on public display as the highly disputed heir apparent to the throne. Plagued by bouts of mental illness and Anderson’s own bizarre behaviors, also her refusal to make any claim to the money, eventually caused even her most devout supporters to back away in disillusionment. Anderson later married, to a doctor who fervently believed she was displaced royalty, died obscurely with her heatedly contested identity still unconfirmed. Decades later, DNA testing would put an official period to her story. Anderson was not the missing link in this tragic chapter. Alas, this revelation did not prevent Hollywood from exploiting the legend of Anastasia. Indeed, virtually all movie incarnations since have very little to do with the Romanov’s all too perishable truth, perhaps because historians remain divided as to what actually became of the youngest Grand Duchess after this bloody coup. So, the rumor, the legend, and, the mystery surrounding Anastasia has been immortalized as everything from a Broadway show to an Oscar-winning film and animated musical: variations on a theme - the fairy tale that became a nightmare, and, most affectingly has been romanticized all out of proportion.

In re-conceptualizing Anastasia’s life as high art, director, Anatole Litvak’s 1956 melodrama eschews all but the slenderest of facts. The movie’s Cinderella-esque transformation, as intoxicating and irresistible, is designed to perpetuate the myth of Anastasia, and no less startling, perhaps, for its own restoration of one of Hollywood’s ousted movie queens of yore. For two decades, Ingrid Bergman had been a luminous star of the first magnitude. From her auspicious American debut in a remake of the Swedish tearjerker, Intermezzo (1939) for producer, David O. Selznick (who owned and thoroughly exploited her American contract) to her star-making performances in Casablanca (1942), Gaslight (1944), Spellbound, The Bells of St. Mary’s (both in 1945) and Notorious (1946), Bergman’s ascendancy as one of movie land’s elite had been swift and assured. But then, in 1947, came the scandal to rock her house of cards to its very foundation. Bergman’s rumored affair with Italian director, Roberto Rossellini was eventually exposed as fact rather than fiction. This, indeed, was the affair to remember; one that, in hindsight, Bergman – and perhaps Selznick – would have preferred to forget. Only it was too late. Bergman’s reputation was pilloried in the press and excoriated on the floor of the U.S. senate. She retreated with her lover to Rome where the couple married and strived to begin their lives and careers anew. Although each continued to make movies in the foreign market for almost ten years thereafter, none was successful at maintaining or even reinventing Bergman’s stardom abroad or at home. Eventually, the marriage came to a semi-tragic finale; Rossellini, once considered Italy’s preeminent neo-realist, now with his directorial career in tatters, and Bergman, disillusioned, quite alone, practically broke, and, seemingly unloved and unworthy of the public’s affections – a shamed figure never to return to form.

However, director, Anatole Litvak was undeterred by this open hostility toward Bergman. In point of fact, it had all but abated by the time playwright, Arthur Laurents was given the plum assignment of adapting Marcelle Maurette/Guy Bolton’s stagecraft for the Cinemascope screen. During this interim, Bergman had returned to America, somewhat chaste rather than chased by film companies to mark her return to the screen, and perhaps, made a little sadder though wiser by her experiences abroad. True enough, Spiros P. Skouris, then head of 2oth Century-Fox, did not want to hire her. But Litvak, along with Laurents persisted, expressly reworking Anastasia with Bergman’s big return to the screen in mind. Thus, a package deal was very reluctantly agreed upon with Laurents essentially going back to the drawing board for a full rewrite of his stagecraft. From the outset, everything about the film version of Anastasia seemed kismet. Jack Hildyard’s moodily lit cinematography aspired to recreate a superb and seamless complement to both the location work and studio-bound process mattes while Fox’s resident composer, Alfred Newman hunkered down on one of his most melodic and heartfelt film scores. A word about Newman is decidedly in order. What can one say about such a towering figure  without gushing; 200+ film scores to his credit, 9 Academy Awards and a whopping 45 nominations – the third most-honored individual in Oscar history, surpassed only by Walt Disney, costumer, Edith Head, and, fellow composer, John Williams. Newman’s score for Anastasia is perfection itself, throbbing with the formidable pang of this vanquished dream unwilling to die. He punctuates the film’s superb acting with trademarked blasts of genius, miraculously, never to gild this lily, but rather, provide fertile soil in which its rare flower can thrive.

Even so, Anastasia’s hit or miss with audiences squarely rested on Bergman’s broad Swedish shoulders. Perhaps better than any other actress of her generation, Bergman implicitly understood the plight of this exploitable exile; the amnesiac of no fixed origin, not so easily manipulated – nee molded – into the embodiment of a long-dead and buried dream, sprung miraculously back to life as a myth of someone else’s design in her own time. In retrospect, only Bergman could have pulled off the coup; radiant, if slightly too old for the part. Arguably, Bergman’s beauty is ageless. It is, however, overcome by Bergman’s own acting chops. In the intervening decade of exile from Hollywood, Bergman, like her fictionalized counterpart, had grown more resilient and not so easily to be fooled by the accolades derived from the sycophants that surround her. If Bergman seemed ideal casting, then Litvak made an even more fortuitous decision to costar, Yul Brynner - of Russian extraction - to play the embittered ex-pat with a hidden agenda. With his distinctive bald pate, high cheek bones and inimitable, yet un-quantifiable accent, Brynner is utterly charismatic as General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine; twice condemned to be assassinated by both the Reds and the Whites. “Good for them,” an impatient Dowager sarcastically declares, and, indeed, very good for the picture. In his rich and indubitably varied career, Brynner had already, by 1956, conquered stage and screen before becoming an accomplished television director. He might have gone on with it, if not for the public’s insatiable appetite for his unique sex appeal. It was a banner year for Brynner at the movies, reprising his legendary stagecraft as the gregariously lovable Siamese potentate in 2oth Century-Fox’s film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I and, even more recently, appearing as the muscly Egyptian ruler, Ramses II in Cecil B. DeMille’s gargantuan The Ten Commandments (both released in 1956). For many, Brynner’s performance in Anastasia anchors and legitimizes the picture as a very Russian fairy tale, given ballast by his commanding presence.

Better still, the flint of romantic chemistry between Bergman and Brynner is palpable and electric. His piercing eyes and authoritative vocalizations are forces to be reckoned with and readily tested by this burgeoning princess-in-the-making. Brynner’s Bounine makes relentless demands on the amnesiac, played with an almost magical perplexity by Bergman. She is half-assured/half-terrorized, the flesh and blood evocation of that long-abandoned grandeur once exalted from on high as Imperial Russia. The genius in Arthur Laurents’ rewrite is it effectively toys with the audience’s insatiable need to be satisfied by their own wish fulfillment for the proverbial happy ending. The ending we inevitably get is neither pluperfect in its adherence to the time-honored precepts of the traditional fairytale, nor is it as somberly an abomination of all that has gone before it. Rather, it evolves into a taut, if elegant tightrope straddling two seemingly irreconcilable points of reference, battling over a very convoluted historical continuum. Laurents’ prose and Bergman’s delivery of these stately and clever lines of dialogue keep us guessing. We are never entirely certain if the memories being extolled by Bounine’s protégé are tinny, faint echoes, regurgitated from memories taught, or stirrings by the genuine article about to make the ultimate self-discovery.  Perhaps because of this, the sublime romanticism of this monumental Hollywood hokum is neither proven nor dispelled, but allowed to exist in a craftily invented purgatory from which the audience alone must decide for themselves.

The other pivotal performance in the movie yet to be discussed herein is given by ‘First Lady of the American Theater’ Helen Hayes; a virtuosic Dowager Empress, withered by life, yet jaded through time. She is the resolute proprietress of this ancient world, fleetingly brought forth from her moldering past through the sheer will of this mysterious and determined pretender to the throne. Hayes’ performance dominates the film’s third act. Her reconciliation scene with the many phantoms from her past is presented with nervous, fitful tears, and, a frenetic energy swelling into unshakable faith as she commands her perpetually cheery, though rather scatterbrained, lady-in-waiting, Baroness Elena von Livenbaum (the exuberant Martita Hunt) to bring out the jesters for one last hurrah.  When Livenbaum is first reunited with Bounine she cannot contain her flirtations. Her air of giddily irrepressible school-girl infatuation is something that the Empress finds grotesquely sentimental. “Livenbaum, your voluptuous fancies are disgusting,” Hayes’ grand dame reiterates with equal portions of disdain and sardonic wit, “To a woman of your years, sex should mean nothing but gender!”

But, of course, desire – rich and full-blooded – remains at the heart of our story - perversely so as it is begun by Bounine’s Svengali-esque obsession to dominate this amnesia-ridden charge merely to suit his purpose. Before long, however, this balance of power shifts. Bounine’s resolve is defiantly and increasingly rejected by the willful Anna, who appears to recount details from a former life as yet untaught to her by the master deceiver. As this woman of no particular past acquires more than just a tenuous toehold on her present, future exploitations by Bounine are doomed to failure. The initial tenacity of their agreed upon venture - to secure the real Anastasia’s inheritance and thereby make Bounine and his cohorts, Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin (Sacha Pitoeff) and Boris Adreivich Chernov (Akim Tamiroff) very rich men – is supplanted by a far more intuitive and primal urge in the end: Bounine’s desire to possess Anna body and soul. Torn in his lust, he is nevertheless determined to leave the presentation ceremony before the spectacle is officially acknowledged by the Dowager – a move likely to lead to an even more anticlimactic and bittersweet announcement – Anna’s engagement to the enterprising Prince Paul von Haraldberg (Ivan Desny). Instead, Bounine elects to bid the Dowager Empress a hasty farewell. “You speak of duty to me?” the Dowager suggests, having already surmised the reason for his hasty exit. Yet, this is not the Dowager as first introduced to us, rigid and glacial who, after an absence of some years, is reacquainted with the man she would have preferred to have faced a firing squad. Anna has softened her heart. The Dowager now harbors no bitterness, even for this betrayal. She is, in fact, amused, perhaps, to bear witness to such a remarkable con having ensnared himself in a trap of his own design.  Bounine too is transformed. Gone is the glowering and courtly usurper, the devious plotter only living for himself. Only in the Dowager’s presence can Bounine allow his honesty to supersede his usual schemer’s slick charm, a weary smile pervading as he sincerely confesses to the Dowager, “When I am in Your Majesty’s presence I am deeply aware of it.”

Pressed by royal command to answer her inquiry regarding love, Bounine goes one step further in his confession, “What has always been easy for others has always been difficult for me.”  It now becomes clear to the Dowager she must act as the catalyst for their reunion. Yet, even in this precursor to some grand amour between Bounine and Anastasia (that we never get to see, though presume has occurred behind locked doors), the Dowager refuses to entirely surrender her whimsy. “The others were right,” a disillusioned Prince Paul murmurs after discovering Bounine and Anna have run off together, “She was not Anastasia after all.” “Wasn’t she?” the Dowager contemplates, as even she has become uncertain of the truth. A fascinating transference has occurred here. Paul, never a man of faith, is unwilling to contemplate any alternative except that he has been duped by an imposter. One would have expected as much from the Dowager. Yet, she is more circumspect as the woman who begged for her understanding then, resurrecting those phantoms from the past so vividly, the dowager now could almost believe in miracles, her faith in humanity – a quality perhaps even she had almost forgotten she possessed – now restored. Adopting the glacial façade of her former self for just a moment, seemingly untouched by shameless sentiment, the Dowager commands for Paul’s hand as she approaches the ballroom teeming with guests eager to embrace Anastasia’s return.  “What will you say to them, Aunt Marie?” Paul asks with stricken bewilderment. “I will say the play is over,” the Dowager unflinchingly admits, “…go home.”

This last line was intended by Arthur Laurents to have double-meaning, at once serving as a curt reply to Paul’s query, but also made as a direct address into the camera, in effect drawing the audience out of the movie’s tableau with the inference, what they have been shown until this moment has all been – as Bounine astutely put it - ‘a play replaced by a pantomime’.  Director, Anatole Litvak balked at this finale, electing for a more traditional, and perhaps, hopeful approach. Hayes still says the classic line of dialogue, only now she turns to Paul before the camera follows them down a grand staircase into the glittery gathering as courtiers anxious for Anastasia’s never-to-be formal debut. Laurents’ prose fit so neatly into the ‘pantomime’ of Anastasia’s wish fulfillment that it comes as almost a shock to the system to remember all of this isn’t true, and regrettably, comes with a far grimmer postscript, undeserving of these woolgathers. In life, Anna Anderson never gained the Dowager’s approval, nor did any such pretender endeavoring an audience with the Dowager Empress. Maria Feodorovna’s death in 1928 put a definite period to whatever slim chance at reconciliation remained. And hence, no closure to the legend would follow.

Uncannily, the whimsy of a Russian princess living obscurely abroad refused to perish thereafter, and would, periodically be revived, particularly after 1991, when Anastasia’s bones were not unearthed among the exhumed remains of the Russian Royals discovered in an unmarked grave near the house of special purpose.  In 2007, more bones were unearthed, this time not far from the original excavation site. But DNA testing of these skeletal remains proved inconclusive at best. Although some of the bones were typed as irrefutably belonging to a child of Anastasia’s years, too much time had passed to unequivocally provide an exact match to the long-lost princess. So, did Anastasia escape the fate of her family? As with all truly epic tragedies revisited in ‘what if?’ scenarios, it becomes too easy to succumb to a belief in miracles – however dubious to their source. But Anatole Litvak’s Anastasia at least entertains us within this realm of possibility, if only for an hour or two. So, did the girl survive? Well, it is the rumor, the legend, and, the mystery.

Our story opens on Russian Orthodox Easter in Paris ten years after the Revolution. A thin wisp of a creature is observed by a Russian expatriate, Stepan (Gregoire Gromoff) near the exterior of the Russian Orthodox Church. A car is sent for Gen. Bounine (Yul Brynner) who arrives to inspect the woman, so we are told, has given her name to a nurse in an asylum as Anna Koreff (Ingrid Bergman). Bounine addresses the mystery woman by this name. But she is easily startled and hurries away into the night, attempting suicide on the bank of the Seine. Rescued by Bounine and Stepan, she is brought into the basement beneath Bounine’s Russian-themed café and introduced to his partners in crime; Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin (Sacha Pitoeff) and Boris Adreivich Chernov (Akim Tamiroff). Boris urges Bounine to be realistic. It seems the Committee of Russian expats who have funded Bounine’s exploits thus far are demanding he produce the Grand Duchess within seven days or face going to prison for fraud.

Bounine proposes the impossible: take this emaciated, frightened and wholly unsuitable ex-mental patient and transform her into the long-lost Grand Duchess Anastasia. Anna resists, but is brought to fitful cries by Bounine’s promise to help her regain her memory. To this end, Anna endures his endless critiques and criticisms, scrutinizing her every gesture and constantly drilling her in historical details and social graces to fill in the gaps of her obscured past. At the end of a week’s tutelage, Bounine presents an enfeebled and bedridden Anna to a select group of six from the committee, as he so glibly reasons to Chernov, “Three stupid enough to accept even you as Anastasia…three intelligent enough to spread the word that she is Anastasia!” Bounine has commanded Anna to remain silent throughout this first encounter. Instead, Anna is impulsively drawn to a portly woman (Nora Nicholson) from the committee whom she correctly identifies as one of her mother’s former ladies in waiting. Unimpressed by this recognition at first, the woman’s cynicism is further stirred by Anna’s reminiscences. Anna tells a more intimate story about the ladies in waiting who wore lip rouge against the Tsarina’s wishes. With impromptu sincerity, Anna suddenly calls to the woman by a nickname - ‘Ninnie’ - known only to the Tsarina’s inner circle. Ninnie is reduced to tears, declaring “Your Imperial highness!”

This scene marks Bergman’s first triumph in the movie – spectacularly understated as she wistfully reclines under a ratty mackinaw, the epitome of a little girl lost, though inhabiting this womanly form. There is a sense of serenity in Bergman’s performance here, and also, deceptive awareness for what the woman – unlike the girl – is trying to achieve, and better still, what the prospect of appearing in a movie like Anastasia means in reestablishing Bergman’s preeminence as a Hollywood star.  Herein, Bergman is a revelation; exquisite, almost Christ-like as she quells Ninnie’s disbelief, her gentleness perfectly complimented by Alfred Newman’s quiet strings echoing the character’s orchestral leitmotif.  The first hurdle overcome, Bounine now endeavors to will Anna into a reasonable facsimile of the real McCoy, steadily growing uncertain of the prospect that maybe – just maybe – he has found not only the right actress to play the part, but the real woman in question. “I know who you are not!” Bounine impatiently tells Anna. Though even he is not entirely certain. After some consternation, and days more drilling, another elaborate ruse is planned on a broader cross section of Russian emigres assembled at the home of the empathetic, though flighty, Irina Lissemskaia (Natalie Schafer).  Bounine sets the tone for their assembly thus: “As you all know I am the last one to believe in either miracles or resurrections…but reality cannot be established without help – legal help; witness and signed statements…now, I am quite sure that some of you have come here to obstruct; the reasons, political, monetary, we all know. There are some who have been made understandably cynical by the revolution. And there are some, who will testify to anyone and anything and have. To none of you do we bring any pressure. To all of you we bring someone who has literally suffered ‘worse than death’ for ten lost years. It is our duty to restore this extraordinary person to the world of the living.  If you are sentimental, say it is because she has suffered enough. If you are humane, say justice must be done. If you are Russian, the loyal subject of his late Majesty, then say it with me…our only hope is his daughter.”

Alas, all does not go according to plan. Bounine’s attempts to reintroduce the Countess Baranova (Olga Valéry) to Anna are haughtily dismissed when Anna identifies Baranova as a perverse social climber who long ago made a fool of Anastasia’s late Uncle Alex. “My mother never liked you, my father never liked you and I don’t like you – please go!”, leaving Bounine chagrined. “You are mad,” he whispers into her ear. Next, Bounine brings over the Tsar’s ex-Chamberlain, Ivan Vasilievich (Felix Aylmer), presently suffering from a deplorable attack of gout. Jaded, Ivan nevertheless is mostly impressed with ‘the performance’ but quietly dispels the likelihood Anna and Anastasia are one in the same. “There are many characteristics and details you could recall, but so could others,” Vasilievich points out, “My relations with his Majesty’s children were impersonal. So, in the end, my judgement could only be determined by opinion and that opinion judged solely on resemblance. I’ve already noted the resemblance…and you’ve given me pleasure. You’ve taken me back to my seat at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. But the purpose of acting is not to appear to imitate reality…rather, to create the illusion. I am not being sarcastic when I say you are an excellent actress…extremely well trained.” Herein, we witness Bergman’s second finest moment; fragile, her eyes moist as she pleads “My life is troubling me”; wounded to the core when Vasilievich goes even further to suggest she lacks the ‘manner’ of a royal princess – even one gesture of it worth more than any amount of memorizations she could undoubtedly recite. It seems a lost cause, the old curmudgeon turning to go. However, when Anna curtly admonishes Boris for preparing to light a cigarette in her presence, the Chamberlain is stricken by his own steely-eyed reminiscences from the past; Aylmer, matching Bergman’s peerless perfection measure for measure, as he quietly turns to inquire with haunted emphasis, “Who are you?”

Unable to attain the prerequisite of signatures necessary to authenticate Anna’s identity, Bounine decides to take his case directly to the Dowager Empress (Helen Hayes) who has been living in isolation in Copenhagen since the Revolution. To this end, Bounine relies on the infatuations of the Empress’ lady-in-waiting, Baroness von Lievenbaum (the infectiously exuberant Martita Hunt). The two share a secret rendezvous at Tivoli Gardens where Lievenbaum confesses the dowager will see no one. Undaunted, Bounine, Boris, Piotr and Anna attend a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Ballet. During its intermission Bounine finagles an introduction between Anna and Prince Paul (Ivan Desny) - a useless playboy dependent on the Dowager for his allowance.  Paul is understandably apprehensive, knowing he has been tricked into this arranged public audience, simply to act as a go-between Anna and the Dowager Empress. In point of fact, he has. But Anna is most convincing, regaling her former teenage sweetheart with fond memories, reminding him that as children they were betrothed to each other.

In the meantime, Bounine forces an audience with the Dowager in her opera box. “Your Majesty, forgive me…” he begins. “I did once when I heard you’d been shot,” Maria glibly replies. “I was sentenced twice,” Bounine admits. “By whom? The Whites or the Reds?” “As I recall, by both,” Bounine confesses. “Good for them!”  Bougine presses onward, asking for the Dowager’s pardon. But the mood turns sour as she inquires, “For what? This intrusion? For the effrontery of using the name Romanov to launch a commercial enterprise? For hammering at my gate for days? Bounine, I have already been shown two Tatianas, an Alexie and a Maria, as well as an Anastasia. I will not see your client. I am as weary of these fake grandchildren as I am of false hope. I have lost everything I have loved: my husband, my family, my position, my country. I have nothing but memories. I want to be left alone with them. You know perfectly well this woman is not my granddaughter.”  Bounine is cast out with the greatest of disdain. But afterward, the Dowager uses her opera spectacles to spy on the ‘imposter occupying the box opposite hers. Is she worth a second glance, more than an oddity, a curiosity or a dream remembered? Who can say? Meanwhile, Paul, having become quite smitten with Anna, pursues her without any genuine intention of buying into her story. Instead, he gets Anna drunk in the hopes she will reveal to him her true identity or at least the magnitude of Bounine’s grand plan.

But Anna remains true to herself. Intoxicated or sober, she cannot betray a confidence. Believing her to be true – at least in spirit – Paul tries to soften the Dowager’s heart. He is unsuccessful in these efforts. Later, however, the Dowager makes her own inquiries with an impromptu visit to Anna’s room. Still, she refuses to take Anna at face value, glibly commenting “The firing squads were such poor shots it is amazing the Revolution succeeded.” In what remains Anastasia’s crowning moment, Ingrid Bergman and Helen Hayes spar. At one point, the Dowager cruelly admonishes Anna with the singular word capable of cutting like a knife deep into her heart - “Imposter!” But then comes ‘the irrefutably great moment of mutual realization and acceptance – alas, not culled from history, but rather a culmination of Arthur Laurents’ superb craftsmanship and Bergman’s own exquisite vulnerability, pitted against Hayes’ infinite wisdom to find the soul of the moment. Anna begins to nervously cough, something only the real Anastasia would have done under similar circumstances. Moved by this outwardly unrehearsed and spontaneous reaction, the Dowager is awakened from her cynicism, comforting the woman she now fervently believes to be her granddaughter. “The phantoms can go away,” Maria tearfully declares, “You know, I have a footman. Oh, he’s a very old man…and each night he goes from one room to the other, lighting the empty lamps until the great dark rooms are a blaze of light. And that is true of all of us. We are lighting dead lamps to illuminate a past that is dead and gone. I thought you were gone but you have come back, Anastasia.” It is a scene with few equals in fifties’ dramatic cinema, and virtually no equal in the rest of this movie, capped by the audience’s understanding of just how deep the Dowager’s sacrifice has been, an even more desperate realization, as Hayes, clutching a still whimpering Bergman, whispers with almost paralytic reticence, “But oh please, if it should not be you, don’t ever tell me.”

Everything else that occurs after this penultimate acceptance is mere icing on an already well frosted cake. Arthur Laurents knows exactly how far to continue with the ‘is she or isn’t she?’ scenario. The focus now turns inward on the usurper - Bounine, suddenly protective of his charge and unable to shake himself loose of his own flawed affections, unexpectedly having blossomed into genuine love. A grand party is planned in the hotel ballroom to herald Anastasia’s return into the aristocracy. However, at a press conference held only hours before the presentation ceremony, a man, Mikhail Vlados (Karel Stepanek) challenges Anna’s claim that the wounds sustained on her hands are not from frantic attempts to shield herself from the ricochet of bullets of a firing squad, but shrapnel sustained in an explosion aboard a railway car in Bucharest. How does he know this? Because he was there when Anna was brought into the asylum, stark-raving mad. Fearful the papers will exploit this story and thus ruin Anna’s claim to the throne, Bounine plots to perform his own vanishing act before the actual ceremony can commence. Alas, he is torn by his unexpected romantic feelings. Confronting the Dowager with his premature goodbyes, she instead commands him to await her return in an adjacent lounge; then, quietly instructs Lievenbaum to fetch Anastasia in her stead – certain the two are destined to become lovers. Moments later, Piotr arrives frantic with the news Bounine and Anna have both gone. A disillusioned Paul believes this proves Anna was not really Anastasia. But the dowager remains optimistic. The girl, whoever she was, belongs to her heart, at least, for now.

Anastasia is a glowing exemplar of what the full backing of a major studio like 2oth Century-Fox in its heyday could achieve. In point of fact, Litvak is working with extraordinary talents both in front of and behind the camera, evident by the impeccable panache and artistry on display in ever last frame. Bergman justly went on to earn her second Academy Award; the industry’s official concession and unofficial apology for having turned their back on her nearly a decade earlier. Litvak’s direction keeps the pace of this fable light and airy. It is, after all, a cinematic soufflé, intensely sentimental to a fault, if undeniably heartfelt from first frame to last. If ever a fairy-tale existed outside of the Walt Disney stables, and one made exclusively for adults, then Anastasia is it. This is a cleverly concocted ‘rags to riches’ fiction, as rife with the enchantment of royal intrigues as the unerring escapist allure of pure make-believe brought so vividly to life in Disney’s own Cinderella (1950). What else can one say about such a divine and ethereal concoction except that, in the years since to have passed, there have been too few opportunities for audiences to wallow in such marvelous caprice; an oversight immeasurably rectified whenever Anastasia is re-screened.   

To date, Anastasia has only found its way to Blu-ray via a ‘limited edition’ release from the now-defunct indie distributor, Twilight Time. Alas, it is an imperfect effort at best. Mercifully, the image is not marred by Fox’s fundamentally flawed color balancing that has oft’ plagued Cinemascope/DeLuxe color releases, bathing them in shades of robin egg blue and/or teal. Color balancing here is not the issue – not entirely. But color fading is, particularly as flesh tones have become orangey and the palette, apart from a few moments, looks decidedly muted and careworn. So too is contrast an issue, with anemic blacks and cloudy whites. Watching Anastasia in a completely darkened room will likely satisfy the casual viewer. The image lacks punch, and overall crispness is suspect with a tinge of edge enhancement to distract throughout. Finally, there is some slight water damage afflicting the Fox studio logo and its Cinemascope tag, plus an utterly horrendous tear that flashes across the screen under the end titles. Honestly, this one needs a lot of restoration.  

Twilight Time provides 3 audio options: 5.1 DTS, an approximation of the original 4.0 Cinemascope/Westrex directionalized stereo, and, a 2.0 mono.  The 5.1 DTS and 4.0 suffer from an unnatural rechanneling. The original directionalized ‘stereo’ followed actors across the screen. But here, it just sounds tinny. Of all the audio options, the 2.0 is the least obtrusive – albeit, with a decided lack of spatiality. TT also gives us the isolated score option – a chance to revel in Alfred Newman’s original music cues in true stereo. Finally, there are two insightful audio commentaries to sift through. The first contains reflections from noted film historian and author, Sylvia Stothard and screenwriter, Arthur Laurents. The second features TT’s own Julie Kirgo and historian, David Del Valle. Inexplicably, we lose the A&E Biography on the real Anastasia that accompanied Fox’s long-since retired DVD. Bottom line: Anastasia is a movie for the ages. The Blu-ray, now out of print and selling privately for insane prices, is not up to snuff.  Perhaps, someday we’ll have the movie represented more accurately on home video and in hi-def. We’ll see. To be continued, folks. Hopefully.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

3