Anastasia

Anastasia (1956)
a film by Anatole Lytvak

Still recovering from the shock of The Butcher Boy I found Anastasia in search of some sanity and this greatly staged and solid movie was a nice shelter.

A story told a thousand times, the family of the Czar Nikolai II has been killed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries but the rumour that Princess Anastasia has survived has spread over Europe. Yul Brynner plays the strict and cold General Bounine who is determined to show that Anna, a recovering amnesic played by the ravishing Ingrid Bergman is the missing princess.

This movie has the great appeal of the classics featuring great costumes and the magnificence of the many European cities. It also sets the great contrast of the monolithic and impressive acting of Brynnerwith the freshness and the flexibility that Bergman gives to her character.
What really made this story worth seeing were those scenes in which they interact.

A nice story that makes justice to the myth of the loss heir of the Czar. A story that feels so strange now in the times of DNA tests but that will stand time with the great Ingrid Bergman in the role of Anastasia.