Anastasia is a 1956 American historical drama film directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes.

The screenplay written by Arthur Laurents is adapted from a 1952 play of the same title by French dramatist Marcelle Maurette, which is in turn inspired by the story of Anna Anderson, the best known of the many Anastasia impostors who emerged after the Imperial family were murdered in July 1918.

[3] Set in interwar France, the film follows a plot related to rumors that the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, survived the execution of her family in 1918.

The exiled émigrés of the Russian aristocracy, in particular the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna (Hayes), must be convinced that their handpicked claimant is legitimate if the plotters are to get her money.

The film represented a Hollywood comeback for its star Ingrid Bergman, after several years working exclusively in Europe following her much-publicized affair with Roberto Rossellini.

Though the last Russian Tsar and his family were executed in 1918, rumors persisted that his youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, somehow survived.

In 1928 Paris, Anna Koreff, an ailing woman resembling Anastasia, is brought to the attention of former White Russian General Bounine, now the proprietor of a successful Russian-themed nightclub.

Later, in a series of carefully arranged encounters with former familiars and members of the imperial court, Anna begins to display a confidence and style that astonish her skeptical interlocutors.

[3] Due to the disposal method of the remains and later Soviet government attempts to downplay the killings, claims of surviving Romanov family members would percolate for years to come.

She lived with a succession of émigrés and exiled White Russian nobles, with varying degrees of belief or skepticism in her identity as Anastasia.

Anderson's supposed identity was a popular sensation from the early-to-mid 1920s, with various books and pamphlets repeating her claims published throughout the years.

Jean Yothers of the Orlando Sentinel wrote "After an absence of seven years from American-made films, beauteous Ingrid Bergman returns triumphantly.