ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This documentary contains just about
all that is known about Anne Frank and her diary
that one cannot get from the diary itself. After
having been a best-seller, a popular play, and a
film there is little need to replay the contents of
the diary in more than a superficial manner. Jon
Blair's account tells us fairly completely the rest
of the story. There are, thank goodness, a decent
number of documentaries about the Holocaust, but
this one does one of the best jobs of bringing the
events down to human terms--precisely the virtue
that the diary had. Anne Frank is presented not as
a saint but as a human with faults. This film won
the Academy Award for Best Feature-length
Documentary for very good reason. Rating: +3 (-4
to +4)
When I write a review of a film, particularly a historical film, I often try to give context for the story in the film. I try to create a frame to surround the film telling many of the incidental things that would be of interest to a viewer. That is what the feature-length documentary ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED does for the book THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and its dramatic adaptations. It generally assumes that the viewer has read or seen some version of the true story of the Jewish family that hid from the Nazis for two years in the cramped attic of an Amsterdam factory. Instead of having extensive excerpts from the book, this account tells the viewer nearly everything else of value to someone who is experiencing the story. It starts with the background of the Frank family, their lives and especially their times. Anecdotes are told of Anne's school experiences. The film tells how the Frank family went into hiding and gives a quick summary of their lives those two years in the stifling attic. There Anne's closest confidant was the diary she had been given on her 13th birthday. After telling how the family was betrayed and captured it goes into detail about their lives and the lives of people they knew in the camps. It tells of the death of Anne Frank and her sister. The liberation, the re-discovery of the diary, its publishing, public reaction, the play the film, and authenticity challenges are all covered. This is everything known about the story Anne Frank and her diary that one cannot get from the book itself.
Jon Blair, who previously made the documentary SCHINDLER, had to be not just skillful but extraordinarily lucky to find some of the material presented. Details about Anne and her personal life are presented by Hanneli Goslar, Anne's friend from age four. They were separated by Anne's hiding, but she coincidentally was able to find Anne when they both were interned at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and was nearby when Anne died. One interview brings out the mixed emotions toward Anne of Peter Pepper, the son of the dentist who shared Anne's hiding place and whom Anne dubbed Dr. Idiot. During the period of hiding Anne seemed to conflict with every adult in the attic except her beloved father and these conflicts seem to make her even more real. Blair is even able to interview one of the burglars who preyed on the factory below the attic. In Anne's accounts of these incidents the Franks could do nothing but wait in silence for the criminals to leave for fear of letting be known their presence. The one major question that Blair must leave unanswered is who it was who eventually betrayed the hiding place of the Frank family.
Blair recreates in harrowing detail the life that Anne must have led in the camps and the fates of the people who hid in the attic. Only Otto Frank survived, but there is information and eyewitness accounts of what happened to most of the people from the attic. Blair documents how Anne's spirit was broken as she went from Westerbrook to Auschwitz to her death from disease at Bergen-Belsen. Blair speculates that had she held on to that spirit she could have survived the month between her death and liberation.
Blair mixes 1940s footage with material he shot and interviews with people who are now dead. Some of the people he brought together for the first time since the 1940s. The film is narrated by Kenneth Branagh and selections are read from the diary by Glenn Close. While the photography is mostly understated, there is occasionally a haunting image in the photography. One shot makes the tower over the railroad entrance to Auschwitz look extraordinarily like the head of some giant ogre with glowing eyes from some fairy tale that could not match for violence what actually took place here.
I suppose I would rate ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale, though I have not given it the same sort of thought I usually give a rating. I take the subject of the Holocaust very seriously and would have a very hard time objectively comparing this film to, say, RICHARD III or THE GODFATHER.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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