A new made for TV film has been made about the life of Anne Frank, seen from the memories of one of her childhood friends Hanneli Goslar. It was televised on 27th January 2010 in Italy. It is unknown yet whether it will be shown or will be avaliable in other countries.
Here are two trailers – One in Italian and one in English:
Disney has pulled out of a deal to create a film version of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ with director David Marmet. It has been revealed that Marmet wanted to turn the film into a contemporary story about a young Jewish girl in Israel, rather than being a closer adaptation of Anne’s famous diary.
Source: thewrap.com
David Marmet, the Pulitzer prize-winning writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, is to write and direct a new version of The Diary of Anne Frank for Disney, Variety reports. Mamet will combine Frank’s much-loved journal, a later stage adaptation by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, and his own take on the story.
Source: guardian.co.uk
To be honest, I am not keen on the idea. It seems to be based on the Hackett-Goodrich play rather than Anne’s diary and other historical accounts of that time, which makes me think it might be close to the sentimental 1959 film than any of the more historically accurate drama adaptations of recent years.
I thought I would post a review that I wrote on my own personal blog last year about the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank. Here it is:
You will probably be surprised to know, considering the Anne Frank fan that I am, that I have only just got round to watching the 1959 film version of The Diary of Anne Frank starring Millie Perkins as Anne.
To be honest, I had my reservations about the film because I heard rumours that it was wildly innacurate and that Anne was portrayed to be like a 1950s American teenager rather than the 1940s Dutch girl which she was.
However, I got round to watching it yesterday after renting the DVD out from the uni library and I have to say I was somewhat suprised.
There were some things which I felt were more accurate in this film than Anne Frank: The Whole Story (which is widely regarded as the most accurate of all films made about Anne Frank to this day) such as the fact that they pronounced most of the names closer to the Dutch/German pronunciation, such as ‘ah-nuh’ instead of ‘an’, ‘ay-dith’ instead of ‘ee-dith’ and ‘pay-tuh-r’ instead of ‘pee-tur’. However, the way they pronounced Margot annoyed me (especially the way Millie Perkins said it), they said ‘mar-get’ instead of ‘mar-g-ho’ which I think is how her name was pronounced.
As the film was based on the published version of the diary (by that I mean the version edited by Otto Frank which mainly consisted of version b – Anne’s rewritten diary) the names used in the film were psudonyms rather than actual names, such as Mr and Mrs van Daan instead of Mr and Mrs van Pels and Albert Dussel instead of Fritz Pfeffer. What surprised me though was that they left out the helpers Bep Voskuijl and Jan Gies (who was Miep’s husband). They also merged Mr Kleiman and Mr Kuglar (known as Mr Koophuis and Mr Kraler in the published version of the diary) into one person – Mr Kraler.
Another thing I thought they did well in the film was the fact that they did location shooting in Amsterdam for the outdoor shots of the Prinsengracht and the Westerkerk. This they didn’t do in Anne Frank: The Whole Story – possibly because of the fact that they couldn’t get permission to quote the diary and so maybe they didn’t have permission to shoot outside the house eaither.
One thing they did in The Diary of Anne Frank which they didn’t do in AF:TWS was play the sounds of the Westertoren bells in the background often throughout the film, and also the sound of bombs. They did do this in AF:TWS but they only really did this in one or two scenes, which actually focused on these sounds, for example, the scene in AF:TWS where Anne is gazing at the Westerkerk from the attic window.
Apart from these however, there were many parts of the film which I thought were highly exaggerated.
I can understand why they played on the romance between Anne and Peter a lot in the film, it was only made a few years after the Holocaust, therefore fresh in peoples memory and so they could have used the romance plot as some form of diversion away from the horrors of the Holocaust. Even so, the relationship between Anne and Peter, I believe wasn’t that romantic at all. Anne was a skilled writer, and a teenager. She could have easily exaggerated the relationship in her diary to give a sense of excitement in her mundane life in the annex. The ‘relationship’ which Anne describes ended before they were discovered in August 1944 anyway, unlike in the film which shows them together till the end.
The portrayal of Mr Pfeffer (Dr Dussel in the film) I also found incredibly unrealistic. As Anne portrayed an unflattering portrait of him in her diary, they showed this on screen too. Dr Dussel was a comic interlude with no real backbone, a character which reminded me somewhat of the cowedly lion in the Wizard of Oz. In real life, I doubt Mr Pfeffer was like that at all. He was a father, had a girlfriend who he had to leave when he went into hiding and who he only had limited contact with, and he had no family in the annex, unlike the rest of them. How horrible it must have felt in his position. Thankfully, he was portrayed a lot better in AF:TWS, but I still feel he deserves a better representation.
Millie Perkins portayal of Anne Frank, also really annoyed me. I think it did live up to the expectations as she did look more like a 50s American teen than a 40s Dutch/Jewish girl. Her voice got on my nerves a lot too. It sounded like she had a cold and had a blocked up nose all the time. She appeared to be excitable and happy all of the time, even when she was writing her diary, which I think was when Anne’s mood used to change.
It annoyed me as well that in one scene where Otto was comforting Anne after she had the bad dream about Hanneli (who was actually Sanne in the film) , Anne actually said the ‘bundle of contradictions’ entry of her diary (which was the last one on 1st August ’44) to her father! Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought she kept all that to herself and didn’t tell anyone in the annex about it, apart from maybe Peter and Margot.
The final thing I want to talk about is the arrest scene. In reality what happened was they were all going about their daily routine on 4th August 1944 when the Gestapo came into the office and got Kugler to show them where the hiding place was. Kugler was then forced to open the bookcase and as he opened the door, saw Edith Frank and muttered ‘gestapo’ to her.
In the film, the people in hiding are aware that the gestapo is here and they can hear the phone ringing. Otto, Mr van Daan and Dr Dussel decide to go out from the hiding place and then they all get arrested.
I think the first one and the real one is much more dramatic don’t you?
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