Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna

Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna
DVD release cover
Written by	James Goldman
Directed by	Marvin J. Chomsky
Creative director	Marvin J. Chomsky
Starring	Amy Irving Olivia de Havilland Rex Harrison Jan Niklas Omar Sharif
Composer	Laurence Rosenthal
Country of origin	United States Austria Italy
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	2
Production
Producers	Cheryl Saban
Cinematography	Thomas L. Callaway
Running time	195 minutes
Production companies
Distributor	NBC (1986) Sonar Entertainment (World-Wide) (2006) (Netherlands) Dutch FilmWorks (Netherlands) Mill Creek Entertainment (USA, 2011) (Germany)
Release
Original release	December 7, 1986 (1986-12-07) (USA) - December 8, 1986 (1986-12-08) (USA)

Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (Also titled Anastasia: The Story of Anna) is a 1986 American-Austrian-Italian made-for-television biographical film directed by Marvin J. Chomsky,^[1] starring Amy Irving, Rex Harrison (in his last performance), Olivia de Havilland, Omar Sharif, Christian Bale and Jan Niklas. The film was loosely based on the story of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia and the book The Riddle of Anna Anderson by Peter Kurth. It was originally broadcast in two parts.

Plot[]

The film starts Part 1 in December 1916, at a lavish ballroom gathering just before the Russian Revolution, then moves to 1917's February Revolution, the family's forced exile to Siberia that summer after Nicholas II's forced abdication in March, the late-1917 October Revolution Communist takeover, the start of the Russian Civil War, and the July 1918 mass shooting of the Romanov family. Afterwards, it revolves around Anna Anderson, who believes that she is Anastasia Romanov, daughter of Nicholas II of Russia. Anna first tells her story in the 1920s when she is an inmate in a Berlin asylum after her suicide attempt. Her story of escaping from the Bolsheviks who killed the rest of her family in 1918 seems so vivid that many Russian expatriates are willing to believe her. She slowly gains more trust, but Europe's Romanov exiles are very hesitant to believe her tale and send her away. In Part 2, she travels to the United States' branches of the family in New York City in 1928, while Nicholas' mother, Maria Feodorovna, dies in her native Denmark. America's expatriate Romanovs also eventually publicly denounce her as an impostor and coldly snub her at Feodorovna's funeral, causing her to leave the U.S. in 1931 to return to Germany. The movie culminates in 1938 with Anna deciding to sue the Romanovs in Germany's courts to force them to recognize her as Anastasia, but it never reveals if Anna really is Anastasia. The ending epilogue narration says that the court case ended in 1970 with Anna not being able to either prove herself or to be disproven as Anastasia Romanov, she eventually moved back to the U.S. and settled in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she died in 1984.

Cast[]

Awards[]

See also[]

• Romanov impostors
• Ipatiev House

References[]

External links[]

• Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna at IMDb
• Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna at AllMovie