Il diario di Anna Frank

We had to watch this movie in Drama class my freshman year of high school. Problem was that I had Drama 1st period. I slept a lot 1st period (and sometimes 2nd). So a 3 hour movie that the teacher taped (with commercials) was turned in to a two week affair, or so it seemed. I got another shot to watch it late one night, 4 am or so, on Bravo. Problem was, unbeknownst to me, it was a two night deal. So I only took in the first half of it. Finally got the shot to see the whole thing on AMC this afternoon. Millie Perkins was just wonderful as Anne Frank, and a great cast all around. I knew Shelley Winters had won an Oscar but not what for. Sometimes a good story is so much better because it's a true story, like Apollo 13, and this is no exception. It's hard to imagine these things actually happened.

Go watch this sometime when you have 3 hours free.

8 out of 10 from me.

The film The Diary of Anne Frank is not taken directly from her world famous diary, but it is rather an adaption of a play based on that diary. The play was written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and it ran on Broadway from 1955 to 1957 for 717 performances.

Three members of the original Broadway cast did their roles for the screen, Joseph Schildkraut, Lou Jacobi, and Gusti Huber. Joseph Schildkraut as Otto Frank is the backbone of the film, providing the moral authority in the cast. He's a teacher and a scholar and makes sure that even under these circumstances, the education of his daughters is not neglected. Gusti Huber is Mrs. Frank and Lou Jacobi is Mr. Van Daan.

The Van Daans and the Franks have been offered shelter in a third floor apartment that is kept secret by a hidden door in a factory owner. The owner Mr. Kraler played by Douglas Spencer is an anti-Nazi and has offered to keep these two Jewish families hidden for the duration of the war in Holland. For two years they live in that apartment and aside from radio news all they know of the outside world is that street in Amsterdam where the factory is located. Director George Stevens to keep the viewer from getting claustrophobic provides us with occasional shots of the outside street and canal. This film is the ultimate in cabin fever.

But it has to be so for the Van Daans and the Franks are hiding for their lives. It's a community of necessity that's created up in the third floor.

Young Millie Perkins does fine in the title role originated on Broadway by Susan Strassberg. She has an Audrey Hepburn like appeal, but never had the career Audrey certainly did. Her sister Margit is played by Diane Baker who's career was a bit more substantial. Two very normal average teenage girls, except that Anne has a talent for writing and observing.

The frightening thing about this film is the very ordinariness of the characters. What have these people ever done that the might of the Nazi war machine should be out looking for them? Some of them are certainly not noble specimens as the movie shows, but their lives are so humdrum like millions of us. Simply because for politics sake, someone was scapegoating a religion.

Ed Wynn as Drussel the dentist and Shelley Winters as Mrs. Van Daan were nominated for supporting players in the male and female categories that year. Wynn lost, but Winters won the first of her two Oscars for this film. Up to then Ms. Winters played some pretty brassy characters in film. She fought for and won this role and got acclaim worldwide for her portrayal as a wife and mother. It was a transition into those kind of roles for her.

So Anne observed and wrote about her impressions of what she saw and heard and the people around her for two years. In a sense this is like Moby Dick with the Pequod being the apartment and the white whale being the Nazis. Joseph Schildkraut is no Ahab, he's just trying to lead his community for survival.

When the Nazis come, Anne's diary is hidden and after the war one of the community comes back and like Ishmael retrieves the diary and very much tells the tale.

Anne's diary, the hopes and dreams of a teenage girl caught up in a world of hate she couldn't comprehend, is now classic literature. It serves as a dark reminder of the bestial nature we can sink to. And it reminds us that hope, courage and love can spring from the darkest places.

Throughout the movie, it's the hopefulness that is constantly being expressed that makes this all the more sad to watch - because, of course, we (the viewer) know the hopelessness of the situation; we know how it's going to end.

The story is based on a stageplay which was in turn based on the actual diary of Anne Frank, whose family (being Jewish) went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland in 1942, sharing a very small space with several others. As the title implies, the movie is largely about Anne. We watch her grow up in this claustrophobic setting - starting at age 13 and spending more than two years there until the group was discovered. Starting out as a child with a natural rebellious streak, Anne grows into a young woman, falling in love with a young man sharing the living quarters. Millie Perkins was excellent as young Anne, and I was impressed with Joseph Schildkraut as her father Otto, who was in the end the only survivor. The movie begins and ends with his post-war visit to the place where they were hidden, and his grief at being the only survivor among his family is powerfully portrayed. In general, all the performances in this were quite good, and there was a believable portrayal of the difficulties involved in so many people sharing so little space under such stressful circumstances, and there are a number of very suspenseful moments involved. It's a very moving story.

This worthwhile cinematic tribute to "The Diary of Anne Frank" offers a solid cast, some very effective settings, and a generally well-considered selection of episodes. No mere movie could convey the full force of the original diary, which no one who has read it can forget. But this movie version is good in its own right, and it does add some memorable, if sometimes non-historical, images to the story. The script does alter some details, and it's hard to see why they could not simply have filmed a selection of actual events, since that could have been more than effective enough. But, as a movie in its own right, it works well.

The Diary is most important for its record of the daily lives of real individuals who lived in constant fear because of the Nazis and their irrational persecutions. It puts names and faces on the kind of human disaster that is all too often described in terms of mere numbers. The movie does well in bringing out this aspect of the diary, making the characters come to life in settings that are interesting, detailed, and believable. The photography also makes good use of the settings and the details.

The other significant aspect of the Diary is its portrait of Anne herself. Her writings combine observations on the overall situation with observations about her own life and self, with a surprising degree of perception. This does not come out so much in the movie, though of course this would be much harder to accomplish. Millie Perkins projects a rather different image from the original Anne, but then again, there is nothing really wrong with her performance in itself. She does make a sympathetic and generally believable heroine. The supporting cast generally does a good job. The fine character actor Joseph Schildkraut gives the best performance, as Anne's father Otto.

Overall, if viewed with reasonable expectations and evaluated apart from the book, this adaptation is an interesting and worthwhile movie.

I had read the book as a child and was swept up in the depiction of lives lived hidden away in the attic of a factory in Amsterdam, the strong true voice of Anne in her diaries capturing a world of imprisonment, the only crime being that of the wrong religion. Anne's spirit is never quenched as she experiences all the trial and tribulations of burgeoning adolescence, difficulty with her mother and a slow falling in love with a teenage boy, Peter, who shares her quarters.

The book was made into a successful play and then transfered to the screen where it was shortened considerably from the original. And that is where I saw it first, on the screen, but the shorter version, not being aware of the original length.

The cast are amazing, particularly Millie Perkins, who was the least experienced of all the cast and has to be in almost every scene. She candidly shared her experience of the six months' filming when the cast was virtually in captivity and mentioned in passing that the most difficult time she had was not surprisingly with the director, George Stevens, who was extremely supportive but rather with Joseph Schildkraut, who plays Otto Frank, her father in it. He made her life hell on set and never let her forget she was totally inexperienced, unlike the rest of them, in the way of acting. I'm mentioning this as not an inkling of this tension comes across on screen, and Millie has to share a lot of loving scenes with Joseph. Only a gifted actress could overcome her distaste for the man and perform as she did.

The expanded version of the movie is remarkable. It engenders a claustrophobic feeling in the viewer and an overwhelming sadness, knowing that none of these characters, apart from Otto, will survive the madness of the camps.

Anne's positive spirit drenches every scene, she believes in the intrinsic goodness of everyone in spite of everything.

Shelley, as Peter's mother, deserved her Oscar, she conveys her unhappy marriage, her reliance on the material, her love for her son, so well. Diane Baker, as Margot, Anne's sister, hands in a great performance as does the above mentioned Joseph. Ed Wynn, breaking type, plays Dussell the dentist as an irritating busybody.

In the way of the Oscars, so many superb movies fail to attain the best picture of the year. This is one of them. That year, the best picture Oscar went to Ben Hur. This is a far superior movie.

9 out of 10. Superb, especially in the restored length. Not to be missed. B&W at its finest.