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May. 20th, 2008 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newmoonstarAlmost finished with pink Empire doll dress. All I have to do is attach the skirt and finish it off, but I've been too tired to sew lately. I used a new stitch to attach the sleeves, so we'll see if it falls apart or what.
Finally, after all these years, I actually saw the Ingrid Bergman version of Anastasia the other night. Being an obsessed fan of the animated version since I was, what, 11? it's kind of funny that it took me ten years! But it's still interesting from the point of view of watching a piece of work evolve from stage to screen (and screen again). I read the original Marcelle Maurette play when I was about 12, and it's really quite unrecognizable by the time you get to the 97 movie, but with the 56 movie you see the links. Bounine becomes Dimitri, and Livenbaum becomes Sophie, Paris comes in, the ballet, all that. Something that's particularly amusing to me was that Ingrid Bergman's white dress for the ballet was originally what the animators had Anya wear to the ballet in an early color key shown in The Art of Anastasia. (And Dimitri had blue eyes! And an upturned nose! And perfectly coiffed hair! What would us twelve year old girls have idolized without the floppy Hugh Grant hair and broken nose?) But the thing that strikes me most in all of this is that the 97 animated version is actually the best, and, ironically, most naturalistic. Obviously the acting style was more theatrical in the 50's, and especially it would be in this, which was originally a play, but really the 97 version is much more subtle, and the characters are more fully realized, and you just care more what happens to them. Granted, the characters in the 97 movie were all much nicer and more sympathetic than the cynical rats everybody was in the play, and even the 56 movie, but because of that, the actual themes of the whole story shift. Especially since in the 97 movie, unlike the others, it's explicitly stated that Anya is Anastasia, so it's able to move onto deeper emotional ground when we actually know who the character is. It becomes a story about people rather than abstract concepts, so it's more able to strike a chord in your heart. For all I'm no longer freakishly obsessed with every aspect of the 97 movie, by god I still love it. Every time I see it, it's like "wow, this is actually still awesome". And it seems so crackified on the surface: it's about the Romanovs, and it's animated, and it's a musical, and it's set in Paris in the twenties, and Josephine Baker and Mauice Chevalier show up and dance a little bit, and Rasputin is trying to kill everyone with his mystical powers! But damn, it works! In fact, the only thing that doesn't work is Rasputin; they could have left him out so easily, and still had more than enough material to keep the story going without him (in fact I feel he interrupts the real story way too often), but I suppose they were too afraid to break away from the Disney model too much. And it's such a shame, because the kids in the audience sure didn't want him in there; one of the things I remember about seeing the movie in theaters was all the little children shrieking in terror whenever he came on! I get a headache just thinking of it! If they had to have a 'bad guy'(which really they didn't when you've already got a story about such huge themes as revolution and loss and identity and whatnot) couldn't they just have made it the Soviets or something? The commies were a paranoid lot from the start; I've heard about all sorts of Soviet plots to get at the Romanovs in exile, even of former White generals being snatched off the streets of Paris by Soviet agents; surely that would be more terrifying, and slightly more plausible, than an undead sorceror with grey skin and a talking bat sidekick? But I always ignore the Rasputin bits when I watch it anyway. It's the rest of it I love. And why I do still, on occasion, include "Journey to the Past" or "Once Upon a December" when I feel like practicing my repetoire of show-tunes. :)
Finally, after all these years, I actually saw the Ingrid Bergman version of Anastasia the other night. Being an obsessed fan of the animated version since I was, what, 11? it's kind of funny that it took me ten years! But it's still interesting from the point of view of watching a piece of work evolve from stage to screen (and screen again). I read the original Marcelle Maurette play when I was about 12, and it's really quite unrecognizable by the time you get to the 97 movie, but with the 56 movie you see the links. Bounine becomes Dimitri, and Livenbaum becomes Sophie, Paris comes in, the ballet, all that. Something that's particularly amusing to me was that Ingrid Bergman's white dress for the ballet was originally what the animators had Anya wear to the ballet in an early color key shown in The Art of Anastasia. (And Dimitri had blue eyes! And an upturned nose! And perfectly coiffed hair! What would us twelve year old girls have idolized without the floppy Hugh Grant hair and broken nose?) But the thing that strikes me most in all of this is that the 97 animated version is actually the best, and, ironically, most naturalistic. Obviously the acting style was more theatrical in the 50's, and especially it would be in this, which was originally a play, but really the 97 version is much more subtle, and the characters are more fully realized, and you just care more what happens to them. Granted, the characters in the 97 movie were all much nicer and more sympathetic than the cynical rats everybody was in the play, and even the 56 movie, but because of that, the actual themes of the whole story shift. Especially since in the 97 movie, unlike the others, it's explicitly stated that Anya is Anastasia, so it's able to move onto deeper emotional ground when we actually know who the character is. It becomes a story about people rather than abstract concepts, so it's more able to strike a chord in your heart. For all I'm no longer freakishly obsessed with every aspect of the 97 movie, by god I still love it. Every time I see it, it's like "wow, this is actually still awesome". And it seems so crackified on the surface: it's about the Romanovs, and it's animated, and it's a musical, and it's set in Paris in the twenties, and Josephine Baker and Mauice Chevalier show up and dance a little bit, and Rasputin is trying to kill everyone with his mystical powers! But damn, it works! In fact, the only thing that doesn't work is Rasputin; they could have left him out so easily, and still had more than enough material to keep the story going without him (in fact I feel he interrupts the real story way too often), but I suppose they were too afraid to break away from the Disney model too much. And it's such a shame, because the kids in the audience sure didn't want him in there; one of the things I remember about seeing the movie in theaters was all the little children shrieking in terror whenever he came on! I get a headache just thinking of it! If they had to have a 'bad guy'(which really they didn't when you've already got a story about such huge themes as revolution and loss and identity and whatnot) couldn't they just have made it the Soviets or something? The commies were a paranoid lot from the start; I've heard about all sorts of Soviet plots to get at the Romanovs in exile, even of former White generals being snatched off the streets of Paris by Soviet agents; surely that would be more terrifying, and slightly more plausible, than an undead sorceror with grey skin and a talking bat sidekick? But I always ignore the Rasputin bits when I watch it anyway. It's the rest of it I love. And why I do still, on occasion, include "Journey to the Past" or "Once Upon a December" when I feel like practicing my repetoire of show-tunes. :)
