Anastasia Cartoon circa 1995

[otma_gal3]

 Of course I know you all have seen the ever so popular movie "Anastasia" and how it's all historically wrong, but I was wondering about the song, "Once Upon A December" in the movie............

Did any of you all find it haunting?? I always catch myself singing it to myself all the time, and it makes me CRY! I listen to it all the time, and never get tired of it, it's just so beautiful! I was just wondering what your opinions on that song were.
bye

[Michelle]

Hi, otmal gal!!

Yes, I most certainly DO find that song beautiful and haunting--in fact, that whole movie to me was haunting!!  I mean, how sad and desolate the lovely Winter Palace looked, the loneliness of Anastasia, the paintings of the beautiful family knowing what happened to them, the gorgeous orchestral music, just the overall lost world of happiness beauty captured me.  Even though I was only in fourth grade/nine years old at the time.  But that is definitely a lovely song.  I like it best when it's sung when Anna's still in the palace (not having met Dmitri and Vlad yet) and senses that she has a mysterious connection to all of this lost glorious family.

Still remains my favorite cartoon movie of all time and I still love watching it even at seventeen/high school senior.  

[Lisa]

I was moved by the movie, very beautifull!
The song is so sad, each time that I heard it, I cry!
A very beautiful cartoon indeed, even it's not historically right! I was amazed by the technical, compared with the Walt Disney of this time...It's like a fairy tale.

And I love Bartok, the bat!

[Annie]

When the ghosts come out of the wall and dance that's chilling and awesome! I love that part.

[Vive_HIH_Aleksey]

Once Upon A December should have been the song nominated from the film for the Oscar, but the marketers instead chose Journey To The Past, while everyone agrees that OUAD is VASTLY superior. It would have given My Heart Will Go On a run for its money.

The whole score of the movie is incredible. It's a shame only 18 minutes of it is on the CD.

Everyone in the film score community agrees that Anastasia was totally robbed of the Oscar for Best Musical/Comedy Score.

Combining Musical/Comedy and Dramatic score categories is the worst mistake in Academy history. For those who disagree, YOU CAN'T PUT THE LITTLE MERMAID IN THE SAME CATEGORY AS TITANIC!!!!!

(this being said I would like to send my deepest sorrows for our dear departed JERRY GOLDSMITH, DAVID RAKSIN, and ELMER BERNSTEIN. We shall miss you!!!!!!!!!)

The movie is a fairy tale, inspired by a play based on real events, so you can't go too much into how inaccurate it is. Especially consider the TARGET AUDIENCE. You can't watch this with a 5 year old kid and say You know, these people were real, but in reality, they were all SHOT and STABBED to death, poor kid would have nightmares for months.

[Annie]

Everyone in the film score community agrees that Anastasia was totally robbed of the Oscar for Best Musical/Comedy Score.

Could this have anything to do with it being a major non Disney cartoon release? At the time, I heard several rumors that Disney was sabotaging Anastasia because they didn't want any challenge to their supremacy in animated fairy tales! At the time my daughter was 8 and wanted all the toys. I noticed that Toys R Us moved the Anastasia line from a prominent display to a side aisle, and one of the workers actually told me it was at the request of Disney, whom they had some kind of pact or deal with concerning rival movie toy promotions! When I went to WalMart, it was the same way- Anastasia toys were moved out of sight! All this began turning me against Disney, which had changed so much from when I was a kid. Walt would not have approved!

So if they did that to the toys, maybe they had some influence in the songs too?

The movie is a fairy tale, inspired by a play based on real events, so you can't go too much into how inaccurate it is. Especially consider the TARGET AUDIENCE. You can't watch this with a 5 year old kid and say You know, these people were real, but in reality, they were all SHOT and STABBED to death, poor kid would have nightmares for months.

There is a difference between inaccuracies in the Disney Little Mermaid, (they gave her a happy ending even though in the HCA story she died at the end) which was fiction, and this, which was the true story of a family's tragic deaths. I just don't believe in making factual events into fairy tales. You could make the same story and call it something else. But this is not the story of Anastasia (see the 'bad off brand Anastasia cartoons' thread)

[Vive_HIH_Aleksey]

Marketing is not the same as awarding LOL. I'm certain that if the Academy were pressured to not give the Oscar to it, they would have picked someone far more WORTHY than Anne Dudley. Think of who was nominated here! JAMES NEWTON HOWARD, DANNY ELFMAN, HANS ZIMMER (even HE would have been a more worthy choice). James is SO overdue for an Oscar. Check out his score for The Village, it is undoubtedly his best.

Anastasia is not directly based on history! That is what makes it different from Nicholas and Alexandra and Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and other such Romanov films. This is based on another Fox movie made in 1956 which was based on a French play by Marcel Maurette (sorry if that is spelled wrong), they remade the Yul Brynner classic for children. Honestly though I don't know how accurate either are to the play because I have never read it. I've never found it. But the 1956 sounds accurate, because of the play on words of a "play."

Ironically enough, Anastasia in 1956 was scored by the legendary Alfred Newman, who has two sons who are also composers: Thomas Newman (Road To Perdition, Finding Nemo),  and David Newman. David Newman is the man who scored the animated cartoon.

Honestly, if this influences people to check out what really happened what harm is there in it?

I guess I'm a bit more understanding and accepting of this because I am a writer who knows about the film industry. Not from firsthand experience, mind you, but still.

Things are more than meets the eye. The best example of this is The Village. Many people don't get it. Why? Perhaps because they were expecting something absolutely terrifying and just went to see it to get scared. But Night's purpose was not to terrify, it was to make a point.

Such is the same with Anastasia, it was not made like Nicholas and Alexandra, whose purpose was to educate, it was made to get kids to use their imaginations, to imagine what life might have been like as a Russian "princess" and THEN when they're old enough if they're interested enough then they can do whatever research they want.

Ack, I'm writing a scene, gettign so sidetracked, I will explain more later if you like!

Anyway, I gotta say, I'm writing a novel whose main character is based on Evgeni Plushenko. I'm not idiotic enough to use his name, but I have a lot of things happen that are very similar to events in Evgeni's life. However, I also have plenty that are not things that happened (example, my character wins the 2002 Olympics LOL). Any skating fan would say Ok that's based on Plushenko, but OMG THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN! WHY IS SHE DOING THIS?! I'm not sure how I'd react to that sort of thing... It's not my intention to insult Plushenko, or honor him, or be true to him, or anything. It's simply a story inspired by him.

Hm, thinking about this makes me wonder if I should go ahead with this novel or not. Skatign fans can be brutal LOL.

But I digress again and am getting distracted from my scene LOL. I'm off!

[Janet_W.]

I have mixed feelings about the Anastasia cartoon, but definitely Disney is a big-time cutthroat competitive corporation. Walt Disney could be aggressive, but he does not begin to compare to the sharks that now inhabit that company. Creativity is almost entirely out the window and largely replaced by "the law of the jungle"--as has been illustrated by what was earlier posted re: the animated  Anastasia.

I do think serious adult stories are legitimate fodder for children's features, but those stories require a very carefully executed treatment. I found Anastasia engaging in the same way I found the 1956 Anastasia engaging--until the thoroughly distasteful (for me) treatment of Rasputin got underway. To quote a line from the Bard, it then turned into "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[Vive_HIH_Aleksey]

Oh, of course, the Rasputin character was ridiculous, but everything else was good as a story level.

It's like the Paris character in Troy.

[Michelle]

You mean "Anastasia" wan't a Disney film?  Awwwww!  All this time I could've sworn it was supposed to be......nuts.

And the original Little Mermaid DIED?!  Ohhhhhh!!!! *sobs*

[Michelle Also]

I also love this movie even though it is horribly inaccurate. Maybe it's because I wish that the family hadn't suffered such a terrible fate or that Anastasia had actually survived that night. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one here (even though I mainly lurk) who loves this movie.  

[Michelle]

Hi Michelle Also!  LOL!   Welcome!

[RomanovFan]

Of course I know you all have seen the ever so popular movie "Anastasia" and how it's all historically wrong, but I was wondering about the song, "Once Upon A December" in the movie............

Did any of you all find it haunting?? I always catch myself singing it to myself all the time, and it makes me CRY! I listen to it all the time, and never get tired of it, it's just so beautiful! I was just wondering what your opinions on that song were.
  bye

You're right, that song is very haunting. It's supposed to be though because 'Anya' is remembering her family.
My favorite part of that entire movie was when she was dancing w/ghosts of her family in the ballroom. I can kind of understand why they changed it around from the actual historical facts though:
#1. it was made for kids and what actually happened was not something a small child should even hear about until they're older.
#2. 'Once Upon A July' just sounds really strange
and I have a question:
What was supposed to have happened at the beginning of 'Anastasia' anyway? I get that it was 1916 (instead of 1918), Anastasia was 8 (instead of 17) and the palace was under seige...? by Russian guards and the people...? or Rasputin?  That movie is what got me interested in the Romanovs in the first place! lol...  

[LisaDavidson]

I don't really know where to begin with this.

I sense that alot of the posters on this thread are much, much, younger than we historians who post here and thus do not realize how much pain and heartache that perfectly awful cartoon cost Anastasia's real family and other adults who care about her. It's the only explanation I can think of - if any of you know of a better one, please enlighten me.

None of us who had to deal with the move - Bob and I, who had our work stolen by a vendor of Fox and had to hire attorneys to get them to stop stealing our work - her first cousin once removed, Marina Vasilovna - would have minded if they had used a fictional Russian princess (as did The Prince and Me) to tell a fairy tale. It was the mixture of the two - historical fact and fairy tale - with liberal doses of outright lies - that made this entire project so odiously offensive to everyone who truly cares about the real Anastasia Nicholievna.

So, no, I don't find "Once Upon a December" haunting or worthy - I find it offensive to the memory of the real grand duchess. What Bob did with this was to create the "My Name is Anastasia" website. No cute bats and no drooling Rasputin - but an honest without being cloying tribute - to the young lady who died so tragically young.

Just what would you think if someone came up with their own twist like this on the imagined life one of the little children murdered by the Islamic terrorists in Russia this week? Wouldn't you be utterly revolted?

Now let's see if I can answer the questions:

1. See above. What really happened needs to be respected enough by a film-maker so that the memory of the dead person is not damaged. The way to explain it to a small child is what we did with the website OR make it a complete fairy tale with no real details.

2. I'm glad you're interested in the family, but I hope to God that you give them a smidge more respect than the filmmakers - who were very clear with us that they had no respect whatsoever for the real Anastasia or her family - and told us so many times.

[Dashkova]

Oh, Lisa, what a terrible thing to endure  I have never been impressed with the Fox Anastasia, and never thought the makers were terribly scrupulous.  The lengths they went to that you describe are shocking but not really surprising.  I do appreciate your sharing some of your experience with the rest of us.

And that song...I don't think I'll ever listen to it the same way again.  My entire family (including the Russians) simply love the melody.  It's too bad such a good effort will be forever associated with that film!