BY STEVE RAMOS

Anastasia

47 Years Later: Ingrid Bergman's Triumphant Return
Anastasia
Unrated
1956, Fox

Today's movie audiences would have a hard time understanding how much of a career comeback director Anatole Litvak's 1956 Cinemascope drama, Anastasia, was for Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca, The Bells of St. Mary's). They are probably unaware how much the American public adored her before her 1950, baby-bearing love affair in Italy with director Roberto Rossellini -- she still had a husband and daughter in Hollywood at the time -- earned the wrath of the press, the Catholic Church and even the U.S. Senate.

Bergman stayed away from America and the controversy, collaborating with Rossellini on five films in the early 1950s, while living and working in Europe. Anastasia was her reunion with Hollywood moviemaking, and she made every moment count.

Anastasia is based on the play about a homeless woman, Anna Anderson (Bergman), who claims to be the Grand Duchess, daughter of Czar Nicholas II, and the sole survivor of the 1918 massacre of the Romanovs.

Bergman gives an enthralling performance, shifting from suicidal wanderer, to a Pygmalion-like woman training for society acceptance and finally, a woman confident about herself. She won a second New York Film Critics Award and a second Oscar for Anastasia (her first was for Gaslight) and the accolades are dead-on.

Yul Brynner uses every ounce of his presence as Bounine, the man who tutors Anna. Helen Hayes plays the Dowager Empress Marie, Anastasia's grandmother, and her climactic scenes with Bergman are the best in the film.

In Bergman's autobiography, Ingrid Bergman: My Story, master director Ingmar Bergman attributes the actress' appeal to her "strong radiance, her erotic attraction, her mouth, skin and eyes." She utilizes all these elements fully in the beautifully restored Anastasia. It's why the film continues to resonate.

Anastasia grade: B.

And the rest
In terms of production values, the sparkling diamond among this year's high-end Oscar winners is director Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 novel, The Hours (Paramount), about three women, including British novelist Virginia Woolf, all connected through Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Technically, the film is top-notch. Veteran playwright David Hare wrote its screenplay. Avant-garde composer Philip Glass supplied its score. Its letdowns revolve around its trio of famous actresses. Nicole Kidman earned an Oscar as Woolf, but her performance, boosted by a bent putty nose, never rises above play-acting. Moore is emotionally transparent as an unhappy 1950s housewife. Meryl Streep gives the only believable performance, playing a modern-day Manhattan literary editor focused on throwing a gala party for an ill friend.

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