skygiants | (no subject)

Last night

genarti and I watched the 1956 Anastasia movie with Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman, and I find myself kind of fascinated by it.

The thing about watching the 1956 film is that you can definitely see how they took the bones of that movie -- sad amnesiac is picked up by con artist, manages to convince the Dowager Empress of Russia that she's Anastasia Romanov, but in the end disappears with the con artist rather than claiming her wealth and station -- and filled them out with sparkles and romance and zombie Rasputin and got a Bizarre Children's Classic, the 90s Anastasia on which I grew up and which I will always love.

But, I mean, there's a lot of bones to fill out, because the 1956 Anastasia is nothing but questions all the way down, which makes it a WILDLY DIFFERENT film.

When the movie begins, we're told that Anna has been in an institution claiming that she's the long-lost Romanov, but at the time of the film's beginning she has no idea who she is and no interest in anything but getting away from the people demanding things of her that she can't explain. Eventually she becomes -- maybe -- convinced that she really is Anastasia, but is that really all that surprising when she has people around her telling her that she's Anastasia and pouring constructed memories into her ears every day?

Meanwhile, Yul Brynner -- his character's name is General Bounine and I keep wanting to call him Dmitri so we'll just stick with Yul Brynner -- anyway, Yul Brynner's motivations as he alternately bullies and coaxes Anna through the role of Anastasia are equally ambiguous. Is it true that he just wants the money? Or does he get his kicks from puppeteering people and watching the fallout? Is this all an elaborate scheme to get revenge on a royal family for imagined slights from long ago? FEELINGS: DOES HE HAVE THEM. WHO KNOWS. Certainly not this movie, which amazingly refrains from showing any explicitly romantic scenes at all between these two extremely attractive people playing out this intense and unhealthy dynamic. The dance scenes are drills, and exhausting; every conversation is some degree of mind game. The closest we get is drunken Anna, giggling and shouting out to Yul Brynner from her bedroom: "It must be very dreary in your room! Everyone in mine is having a wonderful time!"

And then, of course, there's Helen Hayes as the Dowager Empress: a woman who has lost her whole family, and is presented a chance to have a portion of it back, in a way that she absolutely can't trust. There's a really good hug between Anna and the Dowager Empress and it hurts a whole lot: "Oh, please, if it should not be you, don't ever tell me!"

So at the end of the movie, the Dowager Empress has an intense and ambiguous conversation with Yul Brynner about his feelings about Anna and then locks him in a room; then she has an intense and ambiguous conversation with Anna about her feelings about being Anastasia, and sends her off to the same room; and as Anna leaves, she's silently crying -- and it's entirely unclear whether she's crying because she's sending her beloved granddaughter away to live a different life, or because she knows that she's deluded herself, that this woman was never her granddaughter, and her whole family is dead and is always going to be dead.

And that's it, that's the end. We don't see Yul Brynner and Anna have whatever scene or conversation they're going to have to resolves the weird uncomfortable energy between them, and we don't see them leave; all we know is that when people go to look for them, there's no one there. The Grand Duchess is left to close out the show and shoo away all the lost Russians who have come to meet the revived Anastasia: "The play is over. Go home."

AND THAT'S A WRAP, and

genarti and I were sort of left staring at each other like 'OK then!' It is very much not a catharsis, and normally I'm a person who would prefer a thing to cathart. But here -- well, like I said, I find myself still kind of fascinated; I have a certain admiration for the immensity of the film's blank spaces.

Anyway I am also making plans to see Anastasia on Broadway as soon as humanly possible because now I really feel like I need to hit the trifecta.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

melita66

I adored the animated Anastasia. Even with the inconsistent animation of Dmitri (did you know they changed his age halfway through the animation?) and the just not as good as Disney nor Studio Ghibli animation.

I've seen the 1956 movie but it's much more sombre so is not a fav.

From:

skygiants

lol, I just remember the story about how they gave him a broken nose because they were concerned he looked too attractive and then all the women they showed the cels to were like "UH YOU DID THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU WANTED THERE"

From:

sovay

The thing about watching the 1956 film is that you can definitely see how they took the bones of that movie -- sad amnesiac is picked up by con artist, manages to convince the Dowager Empress of Russia that she's Anastasia Romanov, but in the end disappears with the con artist rather than claiming her wealth and station -- and filled them out with sparkles and romance and zombie Rasputin and got a Bizarre Children's Classic, the 90s Anastasia on which I grew up and which I will always love.

I saw and enjoyed the 1956 Anastasia as an older child/young adolescent, so everything I ever heard about the 1997 Anastasia—which to this day I have never seen—confused me deeply. I keep meaning to see it because a movie with Angela Lansbury and Bernadette Peters and Christopher Lloyd and Hank Azaria and Kelsey Grammer all in the same voice cast is probably something I will enjoy, but there's also all the non-ambiguity and sorcerous zombie Rasputin and I am not sure how I would feel about that part. I believe the two films are technically adaptations of the same stage play. Is that what's running on Broadway?

The interpretation I remember is that Bergman's Anna almost certainly is the real Anastasia (all the small things she does and says and knows that even Bounine couldn't have trained into her, though of course cold reading is a very old art), but by now it doesn't matter. She became someone else in the years since the massacre of her family; she recovered aspects of herself in the imposture, but there's no stepping back into that lost, royal life. Anastasia is dead. Anna's alive. That they are strictly speaking the same person is unimportant. The play is over. I hope that's in the film and not just me.

I just realized that my formative experience of the impersonate-the-long-lost-heir-scheme was Lloyd Alexander's Westmark.

From:

pedanther

The current Broadway production is a new musical based on the animated movie, somebody apparently having decided that if it worked for Disney it might work for somebody else too.

I gather they've reined it in a bit, though: no sorcerous zombie Rasputin or talking animal sidekicks.

From:

skygiants

My understanding is the current Broadway production actually made some attempts to meld the two - the 1956 film, and the 1990s film. I was describing the film to a friend who'd seen the musical recently, and she says it ends at the same moment and the same last line. (But is not anywhere near as ambiguous.)

From:

graycardinal

From what I've read, I think it's not quite a question of melding the two (though the connection is certainly acknowledged), but more a case of Flaherty and Ahrens wanting to fix what they thought had gone wrong with the animated feature. Which I can understand, given the nature of the development process. It's perhaps notable that what everyone remembers about the 1997 film is, in fact, the music and its creators rather than the scripting -- even though the script as finally produced is in fact quite good for what it is, despite what were evidently a great many drafts and rewrites by numerous hands.

From:

evewithanapple

Rasputin (and consequently, Bartok) is definitely absent from the stage show; the main villain, Ramin Karimloo's character, is a Soviet soldier obsessively pursuing Anastasia so he can finally wipe out the last of the Romanovs.

From:

skygiants

It's definitely in the film, and definitely an interpretation, but certainly not the only interpretation. Anna could be Anastasia; she could be Anna Koreff, an ordinary woman who was injured in a train. She could be both. She could equally plausibly be neither.

The moment that convinces her grandmother is when she starts coughing, and says that she's not sick, she's just nervous - coughing when nervous is something that Anastasia used to do, but in fact Anna began the movie extremely ill and still might be. What I like about the the 'does it matter?' question is that it works both ways -- she can't be Anastasia again, whether or not she ever was that person; but also, if she and her grandmother both have found something in each other that they were lacking, does it matter if it's not, strictly speaking, real?

I completely forgot Westmark did an impersonate-the-long-lost-heir! The 90s Anastasia was probably mine, honestly. I always felt like Disney's Tangled should have segued straight into an Anastasia riff after the end of the film - 'our long-lost daughter is WHOM? Prove it.'

From:

sovay

What I like about the the 'does it matter?' question is that it works both ways -- she can't be Anastasia again, whether or not she ever was that person; but also, if she and her grandmother both have found something in each other that they were lacking, does it matter if it's not, strictly speaking, real?

This is why I am useless at philosophy, because my answer in these cases is almost always "yes" insofar as what's true matters, but "no" in terms of the relationship. The connections are real, even if their foundations are fantasy or deception or wishful thinking. It would be one thing if the dowager empress were simply deluded, but that line about if it should not be you means she is committing to the play, too. I was thinking about this recently because of The Captive Heart (1946).

I completely forgot Westmark did an impersonate-the-long-lost-heir!

With pretty much the same arc!

From:

antisoppist

I remember the 1986 mini-series, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, with Amy Irving, which I think was just the story of Anna Anderson, without any additional helping con artist. Wikipedia says it had Rex Harrison as Grand Duke Cyril, who I certainly remember, but not that he was Rex Harrison, and Olivia de Havilland as the Dowager Empress.

I just had to review a (Swedish) biography of Finland's Marshal Mannerheim and when he's in the Chevalier Guard, he is popular with Empress Maria Feodorovna because he can talk to her in Swedish and she is missing Denmark. I had to look her up because I hadn't connected the Danish princess married to the Tsar with the formidable exiled Last of the Romanovs.

From:

kore

I saw that one too -- Amy Irving aws really good.

From:

skygiants

Ooh, maybe I'll watch that while I'm on my Anastasia tear. In theory there was going to be a show by the Mad Men guy coming out next year about people who think they are or are descended from long-lost Romanovs, but its future is currently uncertain because it was a Weinstein product and Weiner too has also been accused of sexual assault.

I also find myself curious now to learn more about the woman who became the Last of the Romanovs!

From:

kore

My eldest sister took me to see a showing of the Bergman film at a restored movie palace in D.C. when I was about thirteen, so I was totally swept away by the glamour. It's sad nobody remembers the original play most of the movies are based on was by a French woman playwright who wrote about historical female figures. I like the question of identity at the story's center: if someone can 'fake' an identity well enough, does it matter if they're not 'really' that person? (Anna Anderson was proven not to be Anastasia through DNA testing years later.) But like sovay said, in the end it doesn't matter, even if she's the 'same' person, she really isn't. Her family is dead, that world is dead, that identity is dead, even if she can successfully re-animate it.

I haven't seen the Disney film because I really dislike what is to me 'late' Disney (LOL, mostly the nineties stuff). I just don't like the way they look. (I really like the songs from Moana, but I tried watching it and -- still nope.)

From:

skygiants

I would be fascinated to look into more of this woman's plays -- Anastasia was interesting enough that I'm awfully curious what she would do with other famous figures. I thought the identity question was really well handled, how much it all rests on belief, and how much 'reality' and identity are of the mind.

The 90s film isn't actually Disney, it's Don Bluth (you can tell because his faces always look a little bit the same) in grand 90s Disney style but a little bit weirder. Disney apparently got very pissy about it and refused to let it be advertised on their networks!

From:

kore

The 90s film isn't actually Disney, it's Don Bluth

//facedesk Well, shows how much I know!

From:

skygiants

It's so Disneyish that I also often frequently forget!

From:

graycardinal

As our hostess says, the animated Anastasia does the Disney style well enough that it's very easy to confuse with an actual Disney picture; a lot of people make this mistake. (It doesn't hurt that the music itself is also as strong or stronger than all but the very best of the modern-era Disney run; it's clearly meant to be a stage musical done in animated form, rather than an animated feature that might make a good stage musical.)

From:

ekaterinn

I was intrigued by Anastasia as a kid - I remember reading a dense book about Anna when I was about ten, but I never knew there was an earlier film! *puts this on TBW list* At the same time, I was also reading about Sally Hemming's children and their relationship to Jefferson - I think the same questions about identity and truth fascinated me. What is family, if you can't prove blood ties one way or another? How do we define it? The later DNA testing, of course, provided different answers for both - but the questions of family and identify remain the same.

From:

skygiants

I can't remember why I read Nicholas and Alexandra at a tender age but I'm pretty sure that the animated Anastasia film had more than a little to do with it. For whatever reason, I wasn't as intrigued then by Anna and the imposter effect, but it definitely appears to be an interest I have developed now!

From:

aquamirage

A thing I forgot to mention that I really liked is the visual representation of Grandma dealing with her loss - she wears all black throughout the show and post-reconnecting with Anya she's not wearing colors again but rather is in purple half-mourning.

Also, I have looked up Replacement Gleb (Max von Essen) and he's not a full potato but........personally I do not find him to be a Hot Gleb.

From:

skygiants

Oh, that's perfect. Continued grandma feelings! ;__;

VOTE NORM LEWIS FOR HOT GLEB

From:

graycardinal

I am likewise a deep and abiding fan of the 1997 animated Anastasia despite having no memory or connection of the 1956 movie.

I recall seeing a trailer in the theater (probably attached to Hunchback of Notre Dame, looking at the timeline), and being instantly won over by the combination of Angela Lansbury's voice and snippets of the songs (if memory serves, clips of "Once Upon a December" and "Rumor In St. Petersburg" were both in there). Once I realized that the score was from Ahrens and Flaherty -- whom I revered then and now as two of the minds behind Schoolhouse Rock -- I was all the more motivated, and the actual movie impressed me even more. (Most of the critical attention at the time went to the music; not many noted that the dialogue, and the chemistry between the leads, made the movie a gorgeous classic rom-com in the Hepburn/Tracy mode.)

Cut to last year, when I caught wind of the impending Broadway show, and realized that I was wildly unlikely to get to NYC while it was still running (although it seems now to be doing fairly well, being popular enough to make this year's Macy's parade). I therefore pre-ordered the cast album about 15 minutes after establishing that there would be one, and was again not at all disappointed. It is a gorgeous score, as one would expect from Ahrens and Flaherty, even if there's not quite as much as I'd like retained from the animated version, and the performances are exceptional.

I'm still not likely to hit NYC soon enough to see the original run, but if there is a national tour -- which seems not at all unlikely at this point -- and if said tour stops here? Count me very definitely in.

From:

skygiants

"Once Upon a December" is one of the songs that could reliably make me cry as a child! (The other is "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail because Don Bluth just knows where I live, I guess.)