Art of Anastasia
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Anastasia is an animation movie produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in association with Fox Animation Studios in 1997. The story is a loose adaptation Based on the legend of Grand Duchess Anastasia, the film follows an eighteen-year-old amnesiac Anastasia "Anya" Romanov who, hoping to find some trace of her deceased family, sides with two con men who wish to pass her off as the Grand Duchess to dowager empress Maria Feodorovna; thus the film shares its plot with Fox's 1956 film, which, in turn, was based on the 1954 play of the same name by Marcelle Maurette. Unlike those treatments, this version adds a magically empowered Grigori Rasputin as the antagonist.
In May 1994, the Los Angeles Times reported that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman had signed a long-term deal to produce animated features with 20th Century Fox, with the studio channeling more than $100 million in constructing a new animation studio. They selected Phoenix, Arizona, for the location of Fox Animation Studios because the state offered the company about $1 million in job training funds and low-interest loans for the state-of-the-art digital animation equipment. It was staffed with 300 artists and technicians, a third of whom worked with Bluth and Goldman in Dublin, Ireland, for Sullivan Bluth Studios. For their first project, the studio insisted they select one out of a dozen existing properties that they owned where Bluth and Goldman suggested adapting The King and I and My Fair Lady, though Bluth and Goldman felt it would be impossible to improve on Audrey Hepburn's performance and Lerner and Loewe's score. Following several story suggestions, including Bill Kopp’s canceled Betty of the Jungle, the idea to adapt Anastasia (1956) originated from Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Bill Mechanic. They would later adopt story elements from Pygmalion with the peasant Anya being molded into a regal woman. The budget was $53 million.
Early into production, Bluth and Goldman began researching the actual events by enlisting former CIA agents stationed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Around this same time, screenwriter Eric Tuchman had written a script. Eventually, Bluth and Goldman decided the history of Anastasia and the Romanov dynasty was too dark for their film. In 1995, Bruce Graham and Susan Gauthier reworked Tuchman's script into a light-hearted romantic comedy. When Graham and Gauthier moved onto other projects, the husband-and-wife screenwriting team Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired for additional rewrites. Actress Carrie Fisher also made uncredited rewrites of the film, particularly the scene in which Anya leaves the orphanage for Paris.
For the villains, Bluth also did not take into consideration depicting Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and initially toyed with the idea of a police chief with a vendetta against Anastasia. Instead, they decided to have Grigori Rasputin as the villain with Goldman explaining it was because of "all the different things they did to try to destroy Rasputin and what a horrible man he really was, the more it seemed appetizing to make him the villain". In reality, Rasputin was already dead when the Romanovs were assassinated. In addition to this, Bluth created the idea for Bartok, the albino bat, as a sidekick for Rasputin: "I just thought the villain had to have a comic sidekick, just to let everyone know that it was all right to laugh. A bat seemed a natural friend for Rasputin. Making him a white bat came later – just to make him different". Composers Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens recalled being at Au Bon Pain in New York City where Rasputin and Bartok were pitched, and being dismayed at the decision to go down a historically inaccurate route; they made their stage musical adaption "more sophisticated, more far-reaching, more political" to encompass their original vision.
The pictures on this page are a collection of artworks created for this movie.
THE STORY
In 1916 in Petrograd, Russia, at a ball celebrating the Romanov tricentennial, Dowager Empress Maria bestows a music box and a necklace inscribed with the words "Together in Paris" as parting gifts to her youngest granddaughter, eight-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia. The ball is suddenly interrupted by Grigori Rasputin, a sorcerer and former royal advisor exiled for treason, who vows to Tsar Nicholas that his family will be banished with a curse. Consumed by his hatred for the Romanovs, Rasputin sells his soul in exchange for an unholy reliquary, which he uses to spark the Russian Revolution. As revolutionaries besiege the palace, Marie and Anastasia escape through a secret passageway, aided by 10-year-old servant boy Dimitri. Rasputin confronts the two royals outside on the frozen Little Nevka River, only to fall through the ice and drown. The pair reach a moving train, but as Marie climbs aboard, Anastasia falls and hits her head on the platform, subsequently suffering amnesia.
Ten years later, Russia is under communist rule and Marie publicly offers 10 million roubles for the safe return of her granddaughter. Now working as a conman, Dimitri and his partner-in-crime Vlad Vasilovich search for an Anastasia look-alike to bring to Paris, so they can collect the reward. Elsewhere, an 18-year-old Anastasia (now called "Anya") leaves the rural orphanage where she grew up and begins a search for her family. Accompanied by a stray puppy she names Pooka, Anya heads to Paris, inspired by the inscription on her necklace, but finds herself unable to leave the Soviet Union without an exit visa. An old woman advises her to see Dimitri at the abandoned palace. There, the two men are impressed by Anya's resemblance to the "real" Anastasia, and decide to take her with them to Paris, unaware of her identity…
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