This was different than I thought in that I thought it would be a musical. I think I had this confused with "The King And I". I thought they were made by the same creator, but I believe I'm wrong. I was aware of the death of Nicholas II of Russia and his family. I had no idea there were actually real people who claimed to be his daughter Anastasia or even thought they were. This movie features an amnesiac who meets these people who want her to impersonate Anastasia.The best scenes are when she's talking to the real Anastasia's grandmother. It's here that we're not really sure if she is the real Anastasia or not. I'm fairly certain the real one was proven to be dead. I will admit that the ending was really abrupt. That really could have been handled better. While not one of the best movies ever made, it certainly looks nice with a great performance from Ingrid Bergman. ***

Principal players: Ingrid Bergman (Anastasia), Yul Brynner (the prince), Helen Hayes (the dowager empress).Interesting players in supporting roles: Akim Tamiroff (Chernov), Martita Hunt (the baroness), Ivan Desny (Prince Paul). Principal production personnel: Director: Anatole Litvak. Screenplay: Arthur Laurents, based on a stage play by Guy Bolton (which was in turn based on a TV play by Marcelle Maurette). Photography: Jack Hildyard. Color: DeLuxe. Art directors: Andrei Andrejew, Bill Andrews. Music: Alfred Newman. Producer: Buddy Adler. 20th Century-Fox. 105 minutes. Official release date: 13 December 1956. New York opening at the Roxy. COMMENT: Deservedly a great commercial and critical success, "Anastasia" won numerous awards, including America's two top Best Actress citations for Ingrid Bergman and a National Board of Review "Best Actor" for Yul Brynner. The story, of course, has been heavily romanticized, but Litvak's aim was to deliver spellbinding entertainment, and this, with the support of an engrossing script, a charismatic cast and well over $3.5 million in production values, the director has admirably achieved. Rarely has the super-wide CinemaScope screen been so consistently utilized with such power and dramatic impact. In color, only "Broken Lance", "The River of No Return" and "The Virgin Queen" run "Anastasia" close. The DVD can be obtained on the 20th Century-Fox label. Quality rating: ten out of ten.

. . . (in which a ragtag group of society's "losers" decided to test whether Darwin's Survival of the Fittest applied to human beings) serves as the historical context for ANASTASIA. In 1918 the Russian serfs rounded up their God-appointed czar, his extended family, and a few hundred thousand of their closest friends--and shot them all in the head. "Natural Selection" bred this "privileged" class--the few survivors of which comprise the characters of ANASTASIA--up to the top of the food chain, but the peasant firing squads quickly lopped off their pyramid's pinnacle. Ingrid Bergman's and Yul Brynner's characters both straddle the fence between the dead nobility and the live serfs for the first 100 minutes of ANASTASIA. In the last five minutes they decide to go off Serfing together, which is Hollywood's final answer to the American Experiment known as the U.S. Congress. Despite the Russian peasants proving that Darwinism did NOT apply to humans, Congress persisted in acting otherwise well into the 21st Century. In its hubris, it banned Bergman from Hollywood for eight years on "morals" charges (which is like the sewer pointing out a small spot on the bathroom rug), while also blacklisting the top Hollywood screenwriters for questioning Classical Darwinism (which mandates that America be governed on a "one dollar, one vote" basis, as opposed to the democratic ideal of "one person, one vote"). The brave cast and crew of ANASTASIA flipped the bird at the U.S. Congress in 1956. Maybe American voters will finally catch up with Hollywood in 2014.

Not my favorite Ingrid Bergman movie, although her acting was very good here. Yul Brynner was quite good as the semi-villain who eventually re-orders his priorities. And there is an interesting undertone of the Pygmalion story in this film. The historical inaccuracy is huge, but of course that wasn't the goal of the filmmakers, so that isn't a completely fair criticism. Now that Anastasia Nikolayevna's bones have been found and identified, there isn't that much story here, but of course that wasn't known at the time. The intent was to bring a popular Broadway play to the screen, and although I never saw the play, I suspect that it was a bang-up job.