In 1928 Paris, Anna Koreff Ingrid Bergman, a frail woman who bears a striking resemblance to the legendary Anastasia, becomes the focal point of a carefully staged transformation. The plan is hatched by General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine, a former White Russian officer who now runs a successful Russian-themed nightclub. Though Anna initially resists, she is drawn into a web of identity, memory, and desire as Bounine schemes to present her as the long-lost grand duchess to secure a colossal fortune.
Bounine’s pitch is as much personal as it is financial. He has already funneled funds from stockholders who are eager to claim a £10 million fortune belonging to Czar Nicholas that sits with a British bank, and he insists he has found Anastasia—though privately he concedes the enterprise is a fraud. The stockholders’ eight-day deadline looms, threatening to collapse the whole scheme if he fails to produce the duchess.
To make the ruse convincing, Anna is coached to pass as Anastasia. As the work progresses, a strange bond grows between them, and the lines between performer and performed blur. Across a string of encounters with former courtiers and those who once knew the imperial family, Anna begins to move with a new confidence, her manner shifting from uncertain to dazzlingly poised. Some friends and rivals alike accept the transformation; others refuse to believe it, demanding the credibility of someone who could only be Anastasia.
With time running short, Bounine takes Anna on a nerve-wracking journey to Copenhagen to win over the highly skeptical Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Anna’s supposed grandmother. The Dowager Empress, Helen Hayes, receives the pair with guarded reserve. Initially unmoved, she watches Anna closely, and a pivotal moment comes at a Tchaikovsky ballet, where Anna’s resemblance and demeanor begin to tilt her judgment. The Empress eventually makes an intimate, decisive appraisal, and then, in a private moment, she sees not a mere actress but the echo of her granddaughter. “You have come back, Anastasia!… but, oh please, if it should not be you, don’t ever tell me,” she whispers, though the truth of the matter remains unresolved.
A public confrontation follows. At a high-profile press conference presenting Anna as Anastasia, Mikhail Vlados, a former acquaintance who first met Anna in Bucharest, steps forward to challenge the ruse. Karl Stepanek as Vlados accuses Anna of continuing to use the name Anna Koreff, a claim she acknowledges with a tremor of uncertainty. She recalls being in a train explosion and the possibility of being wounded more than once, suggesting a life tangled in a series of revolutions and memories.
Bounine’s suspicions grow as Anna’s personal ambitions shift. Where she once only yearned to know who she was, she now contemplates marriage to Prince Paul and the accompanying wealth and status. He rebukes her for aiming at both the nobility and the fortune, hinting that her motive has evolved—perhaps beyond their original agreement.
The Danish capital hosts a grand ball where Anna’s engagement to Ivan Desny is to be announced. The Dowager Empress confides in Bounine in private, testing his emotions and the depth of his commitment. Anna and Bounine’s dynamic reaches a fever pitch as the Empress orchestrates a staged encounter in the Green Room, nudging them toward a moment of truth.
When the moment arrives to announce Anastasia, an attendant reveals that Anastasia is nowhere to be found. The Empress checks the Green Room, searches the shadows, and then makes a bold, final pronouncement to the court: “Wasn’t she?… I will say the play is over, go home” — a line that seals the ambiguity at the heart of the film.
Across these twists, the film leaves unsettled the essential question: is Anastasia real, or is she a perfect reflection conjured by memory, longing, and manipulation? The ending refuses a firm answer, inviting lingering doubt about identity, provenance, and the power of belief.
- As the cast deepens the mood and momentum, the crosscurrents of loyalty, love, and the lure of wealth ripple through every scene, from Paris salons to Copenhagen ballrooms. The tale moves with a patient, deliberate rhythm, letting the tension between memory and invention breathe as the characters wrestle with what it means to be seen, to be believed, and to belong.
- In the background, a chorus of figures—Chamberlain Felix Aylmer, Piotr Petrovin Sacha Pitoëff, Marusia Ina De La Haye, and others—shadow the main plot, offering cautionary perspectives on fame, fortune, and the price of a second chance. The film’s lush visuals and restrained drama sustain a tone of measured elegy, even as the question at its center remains unresolved.
