Anastasia

Anastasia is a 1956 historical drama film directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes. The screenplay written by Arthur Laurents is adapted from a 1952 play of the same title by French dramatist Marcelle Maurette, which is in turn inspired by the story of Anna Anderson, the best known of the many Anastasia impostors who emerged after the Imperial family were murdered in July 1918. Set in interwar France, the film follows a plot related to rumors that the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, survived the execution of her family in 1918. Russian General Bounine (Brynner), former leader of the White Army during the Russian Revolution, along with his associates plot to swindle an inheritance of £10 million from the Grand Duchess using an amnesiac (Bergman) who looks remarkably like the missing Anastasia. The exiled émigrés of the Russian aristocracy, in particular the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna (Hayes), must be convinced that their handpicked claimant is legitimate if the plotters are to get her money. The film represented a Hollywood comeback for its star Ingrid Bergman, after several years working exclusively in Europe following her much-publicized affair with Roberto Rossellini. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her performance.