Excellent film about a group of Imperial Russian expatriates who try to pass off a nobody as the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was supposedly executed along with the rest of her family a decade ago. No one knows, not even the woman herself, whether she is or is not Anastasia. Ingrid Bergman plays this woman in her glorious return to Hollywood after several years of exile on account of the affair she had with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. History, or at least some of us film buffs, see her exile as something other than shameful, but you can't really judge Anastasia without seeing it as a homecoming. The story echoes Bergman's life, as I'm sure it was meant to. Can this Anastasia convince those who once knew her that she really is the long lost Grand Duchess? Can Ingrid Bergman convince the American public that she is worthy to be taken back into their confidence? To answer the first, you'll have to see the film. The answer to the second question is a definite yes, as the film was quite successful and earned Bergman her second Academy Award, which she much deserved (her first was for 1944's Gaslight). She was not present at the ceremony in 1957 to accept that award, but I'm unsure of whether she was still in exile at that point. The film was made outside of the U.S.
After Bergman, there is still a whole lot to love. As for the other actors, Yul Brynner, playing the man who enlists Bergman in his plot to win Anastasia's inheritance, gives a fine performance, easily the best of the three films he made in 1956, even though he won an Oscar for his ridiculously over-the-top performance in The King and I. Akim Tamiroff, always reliable, gives one of his very best performances as Brynner's assistant. Helen Hayes is great as the dowager empress whose opinion is absolutely necessary to accept Bergman as the real Anastasia, and Martita Hunt gives a delightful comic performance as her attendant (she was the best thing in the film, in my opinion). The musical score, by Alfred Newman, won the only other Oscar nomination for the film, and it is excellent. The dialogue is wonderful. There are only a couple of things I didn't like, and they are relatively minor. Nearer the beginning, for instance, the screenwriter (or the original playwright) has a problem keeping the ambiguity of whether Bergman is actually Anastasia or not. The hints the woman gives off are instantly convincing that she is the lost woman. Fortunately, this improves over the course of the film and the ambiguity becomes somewhat more pronounced. I'm not sure whether I liked the ending, either, although it has a great last line (which I expect was even greater when it was a play).
After Bergman, there is still a whole lot to love. As for the other actors, Yul Brynner, playing the man who enlists Bergman in his plot to win Anastasia's inheritance, gives a fine performance, easily the best of the three films he made in 1956, even though he won an Oscar for his ridiculously over-the-top performance in The King and I. Akim Tamiroff, always reliable, gives one of his very best performances as Brynner's assistant. Helen Hayes is great as the dowager empress whose opinion is absolutely necessary to accept Bergman as the real Anastasia, and Martita Hunt gives a delightful comic performance as her attendant (she was the best thing in the film, in my opinion). The musical score, by Alfred Newman, won the only other Oscar nomination for the film, and it is excellent. The dialogue is wonderful. There are only a couple of things I didn't like, and they are relatively minor. Nearer the beginning, for instance, the screenwriter (or the original playwright) has a problem keeping the ambiguity of whether Bergman is actually Anastasia or not. The hints the woman gives off are instantly convincing that she is the lost woman. Fortunately, this improves over the course of the film and the ambiguity becomes somewhat more pronounced. I'm not sure whether I liked the ending, either, although it has a great last line (which I expect was even greater when it was a play).