FAQ

In 1928 Paris, Russian expatriate General Sergei Bounine (Yul Brynner) and his two comrades, Boris Chernov (Akim Tamiroff) and Piotr Petrovin (Sacha Pitoëff), down on their money and about to be charged with fraud for raising money in an attempt to locate a potential survivor of the murder of Russia's ruling Romanoff dynasty, conspire to pass off an amnesiac woman who goes by the name of Anna Koreff (Ingrid Bergman) as Her Imperial Highness, Grand Duchess of Russia, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.

Anastasia is based on a 1953 play by Marcelle Maurette, which in turn drew material from the books "Anastasia, a Woman's Fate as Mirror of the World Catastrophe" (1928) by Harriet von Rathlef and "The False Anastasia" by Pierre Gilliard. Both books examined the case of Anna Anderson (1896-1984), who claimed to be Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, Grand Duchess of Russia but was later identified as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. Rathlef believed Anderson to be Anastasia, while Gilliard did not. The play was adapted for the movie by Guy Bolton.

For the money. Anastasia's father, Czar Nicholas II, had left Anastasia an inheritance of £10 million in the Bank of England. Furthermore, because they had been raising large amounts of money in the presumed attempt to locate Anastasia, they were facing imminent charges of fraud if they did not quickly present someone who might reasonably be believed to be Anastasia.

When Anna begins to nervously cough in front of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Helen Hayes), the Empress becomes certain that she is indeed her granddaughter Anastasia, remembering that Anastasia used to nervously cough when she was little. Plans are made to present her at a press conference as well as announce her engagement to her childhood sweetheart Prince Paul von Haraldberg (Ivan Desny). At a preconference, a man attempts to expose her as a fraud by claiming to know her as Anna Koreff from her stay at an asylum in Bucharest, but she deftly answers his questions. As the conference draws nearer, Bounine grows more and more displeased and impatient, and finally tells the Empress that he no longer wants anything to do with the conference. The Empress suspects that he's jealous of Anastasia's engagement to Paul and asks him to wait in the green room until the conference is over before leaving. She then corners Anastasia and asks about her feelings for Paul. When Anastasia is noncommital, the Empress sends her to the green room in order to put on her crown. Just before the conference begins, Petrovin comes running into the room to say that both Bounine and Anastasia are gone. In the final scene, Paul escorts the Empress to the conference and asks, 'What will you say, Aunt Mary?' The empress replies, 'I will tell them that the play is over, go home!'

No, the movie does not explicitly say either way, but it gives hints throughout that Anna Koreff might be the real Anastasia, particularly when her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, accepts her as such. In real life, the woman on whom the movie is based (Anna Anderson) was shown by her DNA to be unrelated to the Romanovs, who were carriers of the hemophilia gene. In the movie, the question is unanswered because Anna/Anastasia decides to give up the past. In essence, Anna lets 'Anastasia' die. Thus, viewers can enjoy the idea that Anastasia survived, but it leaves the mystery of her disappearance as tantalizing as ever.

Dowager refers to a widow, usually a respected woman of advanced years, who has inherited a title or property from her deceased husband. As the wife of Czar Alexander III, Maria Feodorovna had been Empress of Russia from 1881 until his death in 1894, after which their son Nicholas II became Czar and she became known as the Dowager Empress, living in Russia until shortly after the Revolution which deposed Nicholas.

The real Anastasia Romanova (1901-1918) was the youngest daughter of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna, the last Czar and Czarina of Russia. They, their four daughters, and one son were murdered in 1918 by the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg. Rumors that Anastasia had survived the firing squad circulated for years, giving rise to numerous imposters claiming to be the Grand Duchess. The remains of the Czar, his wife, and three daughters were found in 1991, and the remains of the son and fourth daughter were found in another grave in 2007. Recently released DNA evidence identifies the remains as being those of the Romanovs, indicating that the real Anastasia died with her family in 1918.