In the new movie, "Anna," a ravaged blonde, once Czechoslovakia's biggest film star, is living in a Manhattan walk-up tenement. Reduced to bit parts in Off-Off Broadway plays, barely getting by on alimony from her failed marriage to a famous Czech director, Anna takes in a compatriot, a penniless girl who appears on her doorstep one day with a suitcase full of photos from Anna's glory years. Within months, the girl, played by model, Paulina Porizkova to Sally Kirkland's Anna, has charmed her way into a starring movie role - taking with her Anna's friends, her lover, and the details of her tragic past, which she trots out in TV interviews and on talk shows.

The movie has been called an Eastern European twist on, "All About Eve," and has gotten an unusual amount of attention for an independent production by a fledgling director. But what none of the reviews or articles has mentioned about this tale of émigré hopes and betrayal is that it happens to be true.

A year and a half ago, director Yurek Bogayevicz approached a woman named Elżbieta Czyżewska about making a movie. Elżbieta had once been the most famous actress in Poland - the Polish Marilyn Monroe, some critics had called her. Her personal life had been no less spectacular. For many years, she had lived with celebrated Polish director, Jerzy Skolimowski. She married glamorously. She became part of an artistic jet set.

But times had changed, and now Elżbieta was living in a walk-up tenement on the Lower East Side, supported by alimony from a failed marriage, doing occasional parts in Off-Off Broadway plays.

Bogayevicz was familiar with some of the particulars of Elżbieta's life - most Poles in exile are. He wanted, Elżbieta says, to make a movie about her and asked if she would consent to play herself. She agreed, and Bogayevicz spent days talking to her, following her around with a camera. Then a script was written - focusing on the one incident in Elżbieta’s life she most wanted to forget.

In 1982, a young Polish actress named Joanna Pacula appeared at Elżbieta’s apartment, asking for shelter. Elżbieta obliged, made some introductions, and within a few months, Pacula had the female lead in, "Gorky Park." The relationship turned messy, words were exchanged, and Pacula moved out. Today, the two still do not speak.

Elżbieta says she asked for revisions in the script of, "Anna," which, "I assumed, in my grandiosity, would be made." They weren't. Instead, Elżbieta found herself watching a movie about herself - reborn as a Czech and played by an American actress. In return, she got an undisclosed sum of money (most of which went to legal expenses) and "appreciation for [her] contribution" in the film's credits.

"Bogayevicz," says Elżbieta, "did to me what that young lady does to Anna in the film. He stole from my life."

How much of the movie is based on Elżbieta’s life? According to Zanne Devine, a producer of "Anna," "The movie isn't about Elżbieta at all. Elżbieta’s connection to the film is that Yurek offered her the role of Anna, which she didn't want." (Elżbieta denies this, saying there was no point at which she turned down the part.) Devine explains the money that changed hands and the credit as "Thanks for the discussions Elżbieta had with Yurek when we thought she'd be playing the role."

But talk to any Pole who's met Elżbieta and you'll hear a different story. Marysia Konwicki, daughter of renowned Polish writer Tadeusz Konwicki, says, "There was no question that 'Anna' is the story of Elżbieta and this young actress. There were 10,000 scripts being written about that tale. The only question was who would be the first one to finish and make the film. It was the strongest gossip of the time, for everyone talks of Elżbieta."

Elżbieta Czyżewska is a woman of a certain age who could play, with little aid from makeup, almost any character from 30 - 50 onstage. A Polish magazine cartoon shows her as the many-headed Hydra, an actress who could assume any part. Her figure is slight, her features are small, but once she speaks, her hands slicing at the air, she takes up more space than seems humanly possible. There’s a grandeur to her - seen most clearly against the backdrop of her apartment, a doll-size dwelling so chock-full it would take years to absorb all that went into the making of it.

It's impossible to take more than two steps without stumbling over some icon from Elżbieta’s past. A simple attempt to see the Empire State Building, which is visible from her window, becomes an expedition of crawling across mounds of furnishings: A table of beaten brass butts against a chair smothered in tapestry, balanced by a chinoiserie daybed overshadowed by a samovar hung with lace. Strings of pearls drip from age-stained wall sconces. Tattered antique dolls are suspended next to the spectacular view. Elżbieta’s solution to holes in her crumbling plaster walls? Cover them up with dusty velvet roses. It's the "House & Garden" version of Miss Havisham's, an exquisite - if cramped - set for a play, a fact that Elżbieta is keenly, ironically aware of.

"It's a place for decrepitude, right?" she says, gaily rolling her r's.

It's impossible for Elżbieta to utter a single pre-packaged phrase. When I arrive late for our first meeting, full of feeble excuses of traffic and no taxis, she waves her arm grandly, as if to sweep away the messiness of my explanation.

"I, too, cannot be late with dignity," she says, "Always I involve the broken leg of my grandmother."

Irony is stamped on everything she touches. And what's most ironic, of course, is finding this "myth" of Poland living here and in this way.

Anyone who was in Poland in the sixties, according to more recent émigrés, remembers her debut. Novelist Jerzy Kosinki, who left in the fifties, says his mother used to send him letters berating him for having missed it.

"My mother was a theater freak," says Kosinki. "Her letters would say, 'Of all the things you've missed in Poland, you've missed the Polish Sarah Bernhardt.' My mother was a very critical woman; she had very seldom a kind word to say about any theatre person. But she saw everything that moved upon the stage and, most especially, anything with Elżbieta."

Critic Jan Kott, who was the leading reviewer in Warsaw at the time, says, "Of course, Elka [a diminutive of Elżbieta] was a legend. She is still a legend. It is always the story of this Person. One can hate her, one can be in love with her, but one can never forget her. Anyone would tell you she had the most beautiful breasts in Poland. One failure after another failure, but always Elka remains this Person."

When Elżbieta appeared in "Medea," Kott wrote, "Elżbieta Czyżewska is herself the whole chorus of a Greek tragedy."

"For it is a sad story, finally," he says. "She left Poland at the top of her artistic career to marry this journalist."

In 1965, "Polityka, Poland's equivalent of "Time," ran a picture of Elżbieta on its cover, captioned "PRIDE OF HER GENERATION." That same year, David Halberstam, back from his Pulitzer Prize-winning tour of Vietnam, became the Warsaw correspondent for the New York, "Times." Shortly after his arrival, Elżbieta opened in Arthur Miller's "After the Fall." The play, Miller's thinly disguised account of his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, was much more than just another theatrical event. Miller himself showed up for the previews. "Elżbieta seemed perfect for Maggie [the Monroe character]," says Miller. "The same intensity, the same insecurity. Everything she said came from the heart - and seemed to embarrass her at the same time." Halberstam interviewed her.

Censors were edgy because of Miller's allusions to the American Communist party. The play, however, is remembered by Poles not so much for its depiction of the McCarthy era as for getting away with the first nude scene on the Polish stage. Maggie opens her robe at one point, giving the audience a glimpse of her naked back. Elżbieta, conforming to Polish decency laws, wore underwear beneath her robe throughout the previews. The other actors teased her about this, daring her to do the scene as it was written. Finally she agreed.

"But not just for you guys," she said. "I'm doing it for the censor, and he's going to approve."

Elżbieta banked on the fact that the censor would be so preoccupied with Miller's polemics that he wouldn't notice a naked woman onstage. She was right, and the play opened, nude scene intact, with the censor's stamp of approval.

That night, a ball was held. Warsaw in those days was like Vienna before the war, with balls every Saturday night during the winter. It was only natural that the "Time's" Warsaw correspondent should be there. And that the star of the most controversial play in Poland should dance with him. The only hitch was language: Neither spoke the other's native tongue. So they waltzed to the accompaniment of fits and starts of French.

"I am wearing this white lace dress and having this additional touch of, you know, 'She just opened in a play,'" Elżbieta recalls in self-mocking awe. "Meanwhile, there is this tall, beautiful man. You can show yourself and your dress against him so much better. I spend the whole evening with David, listening to him telling me constantly the stories of jungles and vegetation covering up this and that. I remember people making fun of him because he was wearing heavy-duty snowshoes with the black tie. And the whole reaction of me was, 'This was the way Man is supposed to be.'"

"But when I look back, I see how these characters were moved about. I am in Arthur Miller's play. Are you telling me I am not going to fall in love with this guy who is a tall American Jew, a writer with glasses?

"And David, the hero of Vietnam who defies authority to get the story - is there any question that he will marry the Sweetheart of Poland [with a scornful twist of her mouth, she utters a phrase that was one of her epithets], against all wishes of the secret police, and get himself expelled to become a piece of news?"

Both characters played their parts accordingly. A few months later, on their wedding day, Elżbieta received the Zlota Maska (Golden Mask), then the most coveted acting award in Poland. The marriage was announced at the awards ceremony - without any mention of the groom's name. Anti-Semitism had become the fashion again in Poland.

"Soon enough," says Elżbieta, "David writes something and gets himself expelled." Elżbieta’s situation was no less tenuous. In the year she was proclaimed the most popular actress in Poland, she was offered a single part.

The solution, clearly, was to leave. Halberstam had plenty of connections back home; it seemed only logical that once Elżbieta had mastered English, she could resume her career in the States.

The parts were slow to materialize, but those early years in New York were glittering all the same. Elżbieta’s experience as a Pole in exile was far from typical. Because Halberstam was who he was, Elżbieta became an instant insider. She became a personality at Elaine's. And every Pole who passed through New York knew the door was open at the Halberstam's Eastern European crash pad. Elżbieta has a souvenir from that time, a black patent-leather handbag plastered with a sticker from Robert Kennedy's campaign: It's signed XXOO, BOBBY.

"They seemed so beautiful together at first," says writer, Nancy Weber. "The big, strong American who carried off this fragile beauty to freedom. It all seemed so romantic. But anything with that much romance... well, the movie ends."

As did the marriage, which had become a stormy one. There were scenes at Elaine's. Elżbieta began to drink heavily (she has since stopped altogether). It wasn't until 1975, though, that the marriage was officially over. Many of their friends wished it had ended sooner, wished it had been possible for Elżbieta to return to Poland and pick up where she'd left off.

But it isn't so easy for an émigré to return. In 1968, Elżbieta decided to risk going back to Poland for the filming of, "Everything for Sale," with director Andrzej Wajda (known for such classics as "Man of Iron"). Shortly after she arrived, an open letter appeared on the front page of a state-run publication, chastising Wajda for hiring her. "Maybe this Mrs. Halberstam is a good actress, maybe she's not," the letter said. "One thing, though, is certain: She is an immoral person."

Even the weather refused to cooperate. For weeks, filming was held up because the movie needed a snowy landscape and snow was late that year. Finally, it came. And as it fell, the secret police announced they wanted to interview Mrs. Halberstam. By the time the interrogation was over, the snow had melted. Because of such incidents, Elżbieta decided it would be better for all concerned if she left Poland.

This attempt to appease the authorities didn't prevent a strip search at the airport. "The same woman who will ask you for a photo for her daughter who loves you so much in the movies," says Elżbieta "will put her finger where it does not belong. And whatnot."

Typically, Elżbieta chose not to make a scene over being searched, but over one of the items airport officials had confiscated: a silk portrait of Mao Tse-tung that she'd planned to sew into a jeans jacket. She insisted on getting a receipt. The people detaining her finally realized that a receipt from the Polish government for a picture of Mao would be far more valuable in the U.S. than the picture itself. "So they give him back," says Elżbieta. "I'm given to bad taste at times."

She didn't return for thirteen years.

"So now anytime a Pole stays with us, I have to prove to them that this marriage is worth betraying the theatre for," says Elżbieta. "Now that I have been redefined, I have this responsibility to Poles who have emigrated. I wasn't thrown in a bundle of laundry over the Berlin Wall, but that is the part I am now given."

In fact, Elżbieta did take a brief turn at dissident drama shortly after her marriage. Journalists Frederick and Barbara Ungeheuer were getting married in West Germany, and Halberstam was to be best man. But because Elżbieta was still a Polish citizen, she couldn't get a visa in time.

"Rather than miss the wedding," says Barbara Ungeheuer, "Elżbieta borrowed someone else's passport. So my meeting of her is this woman all bundled up in a scarf and glasses, making her illicit way into the Black Forest. Even then, she was so brave."

And there were a few roles besides those of a personal nature, including a hilarious bit as the klutz maid in "Putney Swope." There was a performance as Mrs. Lenin in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's "Travesties." When Wajda came to the U.S. in 1974 and directed a series of plays at the Yale Repertory Theatre, he insisted Elżbieta be included in the company.

Theatre people are full of stores of how Elżbieta transformed the way they think about acting. Jerome Dempsey was Meryl Streep's acting teacher at Yale during Elżbieta’s stint there.

"We were all intoxicated by her, but no one more than Meryl," says Dempsey. "Everything about Elżbieta fascinated her - the way she talked, the way she used her hands, her trench coat. Then one night, I saw Elżbieta walking smartly home in that way she has. And smartly behind her, doing the same walk, was Meryl.

"When I saw "Sophie's Choice," I had to laugh," adds Dempsey. "Because I kept wondering what was there that Elżbieta had given to Meryl."

Of Elżbieta’s portrayal of a madwoman in the Yale adaption of Dostoevski's "The Possessed," Jack Kroll of Newsweek wrote, "The most remarkable acting is by Elżbieta Czyżewska as the ill-fated Maria Lebyatkin, the crippled, crazy girl whom Stavrogin has married on a bet. From this character Miss Czyżewska creates a terrible beauty."

And after almost fourteen years, Robert Brustein, then head of the Yale Rep and now artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre, still remembers Elżbieta’s performance in that play vividly: "She had great depth of feeling, virtually a tragic depth," he says. "I can still see her hands, her fluttering hands and those staring eyes. She makes choices that are larger than life."

Despite these accolades, nothing seemed to jell. One part didn't lead to another. No one seems to know quite why. Some blame Elżbieta’s accent, which after twenty years in this country is still quite thick.

"What is so sad about this speech impediment," says Elżbieta, "is that language then becomes a thing to be attacked rather than embraced and loved."

Robert Brustein believes that Slavic actors have a harder time with English than any other émigré actors do. "And for some reason, the roles that tend to be available to them are always the same: émigré Slavs," he says. "As you an imagine, there isn't much call for that."

Actor, Olek Krupa, one of few exiled Poles who have managed to make a living in the theatre, often calls Elżbieta to complain. "Again I must play a Russian spy," is his constant refrain.

Some blame cultural differences. The theatre world in Poland is an entirely different proposition. You go to drama school and that's that. Parts are doled out based on your academic performance. There are no auditions, no agents, no hanging around soda shops hoping to be discovered.

"That's one thing about a Communist country if you are privileged at all - and well-known actors and writers are," says magazine editor Klara Glowezewska, whose parents left Poland in 1962. "Oh you're poor by American standards, but you do have the better apartment, you do have the car. And because there isn't the economic pressure you have here always, you can devote yourself to your art. Nights can be spent drinking and telling anecdotes, and there are love affairs and this and that. It's perhaps amplified because you know there's Russia across the border and here you are being so bad."

Some blame what they see as a grandly self-destructive element in Elżbieta. "I think in some way she must not have wanted success all that much," says one Polish friend. "She'd be famously rude to people who were in a position to help her."

What's perhaps most intriguing is that the matter of Elżbieta’s career should still, after all these years, be a matter for discussion among the Polish community.

"All Poles in New York can talk about is, 'Can you believe how Elżbieta f***ed up yet again?' " says one. "That's the other side for the myth of Elżbieta. She is in some way emblematic of what can happen to an Eastern European artist in this land. The question always is 'What do you think will happen to Elżbieta next time?' "

Six years ago, Joanna Pacula provided the answer. It was a politically pregnant time in Poland. Solidarity had been crushed: Jaruzelski was in charge. The poles in New York responded by "calling off" Christmas. Instead of the traditional celebrations, a large group would gather at Elżbieta’s apartment, the one she'd moved into after she and Halberstam got divorced. Money was tighter than it used to be, but Elżbieta’s aura was undiminished.

"It was still a big deal to get invited to Elżbieta’s," says Klara Glowczewska. "Her parties were famous."

"To the mind of people in Poland, it is that anybody comes to me, I will make one, two, three phone calls and everything suddenly is happening for them," says Elżbieta. "Meanwhile, I am going downer and downer in the station of life, shedding a painting here, a couch there. Con Edison is defrosting my refrigerator, but still I have these names in my address book." A number of Poles who'd been caught in transit during the military takeover found their way to those gatherings. One was Joanna Pacula.

Pacula had no money, no place to go. Elżbieta insisted that she move in. "She is miserable, she speaks no English. Of course, she stays with me; of course, she uses my clothes. I help in whatever way I can," says Elżbieta.

"But when I look back at this character, I understand that she feels she must play the Little Match Girl. Constantly she must be helped. And when she finds that I cannot help her so much as the myth in Poland said I could, she must remove herself to a new situation where she again is the Little Match Girl and someone must rescue her."

What happened is known only to the two women. According to Elżbieta, the day of their falling out, she had gone to sell a piece of tapestry to pay her electric bill. "We are starting a new life; we start by having the light," she says. "I also buy with this money some buttons of peanut butter, which the young lady loves."

But the new life began somewhat differently than Elżbieta intended. She and Pacula ended up screaming at each other, and Reese's peanut-butter cups were hurled out the window, where they were left to melt in the rain.

"I'm easily given to histrionics," says Elżbieta, "given that it is my profession."

According to Pacula, "Nothing happened. People talk."

"Nothing has happened, but something has happened," says a Pole who has remained a friend of both women. "It is more of a psychological thing. This older actress finds a young actress who she thinks is the mirror image. Only the mirror doesn't act the way she wants it to. Some Poles see the outcome of this collision as Elżbieta’s degradation and Pacula's fame and fortune. Elżbieta has her success in her own way."

And certainly, Elżbieta’s way doesn't follow a straight and narrow path. Try to talk seriously with her about success, and she flings her arm toward her fabulously ugly mutt, Halinka, saved from certain death in Poland in 1981, when the starving population would just as soon eat a dog as look at it.

"Halinka," says Elżbieta, "is the only one I know who has truly made it in this country."

"What is so fascinating - sad, when you live it - is the trouble one has with one's own fellow immigrants," says Barbara Ungeheuer. "When they make it big, they don't want you around anymore. It's always been true. It was true of Bertolt Brecht, who couldn't get things done here because Kurt Weill said, 'I now have offers with tremendous American types.'"

"It's ugly," says Klara Glowczewska, "but that's émigré politics."

When Janusz Glowacki came to New York in 1982, he was an acclaimed international playwright, but he couldn't get an agent. Like so many other Poles, he turned to Elżbieta. She explained to him how a play is produced in America. She persuaded him to do a reading of his play, "Fortinbras Gets Drunk," in Woodstock, New York - against his objections that work in a "provincial theatre" would be a significant step down in the world. The reading was a success, and Glowacki was commissioned to write a work for Elżbieta and Olek Krupa. The result was "Hunting Cockroaches," the story of a once-famous Polish actress who lives in a Lower East Side walk-up and can't get a job because of her heavy accent.

Elżbieta worked with Glowacki closely on the text. There are New York touches that a recent émigré couldn't have come up with - such as the reference to an art critic from Poland who's in the enviable position of waiting on tables at "an Italian restaurant at Second Avenue and 88th Street."

"I had to persuade Janusz that would be funny," says Elżbieta.

On opening night, Elżbieta said to director Larry Sacharow, "I'm so nervous, can I change my opening line to, 'My name is Anka... I'm a nervous wreck?'" The director agreed, and that's the way the play now reads. The reviews were outstanding, and after a season at Woodstock, "Cockroaches," moved to New York. And the part Elżbieta had created, the role of the Polish actress, went to Dianne Wiest. In a "Times" interview, a reporter asked Wiest if she, like Anka, would describe herself as a nervous wreck.

"It is always the same thing," says Nancy Weber. "People take what Elżbieta has to offer, and then they leave."

The pattern bewilders many. "One wonders what kind of country this is that it cannot come up with something for Elżbieta," says Jerzy Kosinski. "It is more than unfortunate that this country has never been hospitable to her. So much has been missed. I know of no one, no one at all, I would rather listen to than Elżbieta. She's walking drama, an inspiration to everyone who knows her."

Playwright John Guare acknowledges such inspiration as well. He credits Elżbieta for an entire cycle of plays - his "Lydie Breeze" series.

"I was walking along a beach in Nantucket, and I saw Elżbieta talking to her niece, who'd just come in from Poland," says Guare. "Elżbieta was gesturing passionately with her arm, and her niece was listening so intently that I wondered, 'What is she teaching this young girl? What is she passing on to her of life? I had to leave; all I could do was go home and write a play. It's a snapshot that's still in my head: Elżbieta in a long white dress, walking along the Nantucket surf. She owned the beach."

Elżbieta was cast as the Polish woman Guare wrote about in a workshop production of "Lydie Breeze," but when the play moved to the American Place Theatre, the character had become Irish. The cast, naturally, was changed.

"The American way of life, always you take," says Jan Kott. "It's a very pragmatic society, a very cruel society. And Elka can never be that. Still, an hour for good luck and she will make her career. She's not a young woman, unfortunately" - Kott pauses to suck with great enthusiasm on his cigarette - "but still she has a charm. I have been in love with her in some way I think all these years. How can I not be? Always she gives of herself. Whatever she have, she will give."

Her generosity is legendary. There are people who won't compliment Elżbieta on what she's wearing because they know she'll present it to them. She gives away everything as though it were nothing, even success.

Which is why, unlike the character of Anna, Elżbieta could never truly be called a victim.

"Whatever fantastically depressing things have happened to her, she herself is not a depressing person," says Weber. "She's a triumphant soul. I remember, shortly after she married David, playing Scrabble with the two of them. She put down the word 'lien.' David said in a rather condescending way, 'Very good Elżbieta, and do you know what it means?' And she said, ever so meekly, 'Yes, David, it's as in when you owe money and the bank leans on you to pay it back.' Even when it's just a punful word-play that puts down the husband with the Pulitzer Prize, she triumphs."

As she does in her very un-American way of regarding her life with affectionate cynicism.

"I'm looking at that person I was," says Elżbieta. "I'm dancing with this man because he shows off my dress so nicely, and it's like walking in the mountains, whistling and knocking a little pebble in front of you because you're so joyful. And then that pebble goes down the mountain and starts an avalanche, and you find yourself descending with that avalanche and you say" - here Elżbieta gives a rueful shrug - "I was only walking in the mountains. I didn't mean for that whole thing to happen."