‘ANASTASIA’--SOME HIGHS, MORE LOWS

“Anastasia: The Story of Anna” is a simply gorgeous account of the woman who claimed to be the daughter of the last Russian czar, a richly mounted, exquisitely staged treatment whose production values soar above just about anything else available on American TV.

Otherwise, it rates a big, fat nyet.

Airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on Channels 4, 36 and 39, this four-hour NBC version is far prettier and grander than the 1956 “Anastasia” theatrical movie that earned Ingrid Bergman an Academy Award as the mysterious Anna Anderson. It is also far sillier, much of it being fantasy.

Its credibility problems go to the heart of the ongoing dispute over TV docudrama. Not that NBC specifically labels this story docudrama. But, as it purports to be the biography of an actual person, the implication is obvious.

Czar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra and their five children were reported murdered by Bolsheviks in 1918 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. However, Anna Anderson created enormous controversy by surfacing in Berlin in the early 1920s claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia Niolaievna, who had somehow survived the mass shooting of her family. NBC takes the story only to 1938, although Anna did not die until 1984 after spending most of her life unsuccessfully campaigning for certification as Anastasia.

Written by James A. Goldman, directed by Marvin Chomsky (“Peter the Great”) and filmed in Vienna and New York City, “The Story of Anna” stars Amy Irving in a meticulously designed, beautifully lit, glittering spectacle set in the haunts of the rich and royal. The gloss works for, oh, about an hour, before the realization sets in that you are watching a sort of early Robin Leach, a hollow, talky scenario whose appeal is entirely on the surface.

To put it kindly, some of the logic is elusive. The first hint of Anna as Anastasia occurs in a hospital when another patient tells her, “I know I’ve seen your face.” The woman produces a magazine picture showing Anna as a child, which is fine, except that Irving looks nothing like the actress playing Anna as a child.

And much later, a childhood playmate produces a drawing he says he had been saving for Anna all these years. But why would he save a drawing for her if he didn’t know she was alive.

“The Story of Anna” lacks historical perspective and its characters have no dimension. Irving is trapped in a flat, stony character and required to speak in an English accent that NBC apparently felt would convey more class than good old Americanese.

Not to be missed, though, is a small jewel of a performance by Olivia de Havilland as the Romanov dowager empress, firm and disciplined, regarding her fellow Romanovs in exile as if they were dusty chess pieces.

“The Story of Anna” is at its most foolish in concocting a lumbering romance between Anna and a Prince Erich, played by Jan Niklas (“Peter the Great”). Their hokey relationship is often the heart of the story, and you want to laugh out loud each time Prince Erich looks at Anna. His eyes glisten and his pencil mustache seems almost to twitch.

At the end of the TV story, an off-screen voice announces that “Anna and Erich never married.” How could they have married? There was no Prince Erich, according to Peter Kurth, author of “Anastasia,” the 1983 book said to be the primary source for the NBC drama.

“There was a Prince Frederick, but she didn’t meet him until 1932 (almost a decade after NBC’s Anna meets Prince Erich),” Kurth said Friday. Moreover, it’s uncertain whether Anna and Prince Frederick were even that romantic, he added.

Kurth said the real Anna was much different than Irving’s character and that an earlier script for “The Story of Anna” was more truthful. “NBC brass insisted on building up the romance,” he said. Hence, Prince Erich.

Serge Markov, another prominent character in the NBC story, is apparently meant to be the real-life Gleb Botkin, a fervent supporter of Anna in the United States. Kurth said Gleb’s name was changed in the script for legal reasons. In the NBC story, Serge/Gleb ultimately questions Anna’s authenticity. “I was annoyed by what they did to the Gleb character,” Kurth said. “There was never, never any doubt expressed by him about Anna.”

Reality, NBC style.