Five Anne Frank Movies (And One Documentary)
It’s eighty years ago today since Anne Frank went into hiding. Eighty years since she piled on layers and layers of clothing, strapped on her school backpack, and trudged through the rain to her hiding place, leaving behind freedom, her bed, her home, and everything she knew for a physically caging existence over her father’s pectin and spice business.
If Anne was still alive today, she would be ninety-three years old. She once said she wanted to go on living even after her death, and she’s more than gotten her wish. Not only via her diary, which is the best way to meet her, but through the dozens of movies that have been made about her over the years.
There are way too many to list here, and anyone who wants to read more about Anne’s filmography can go to Taking Up Room and, of course, the excellent Anne Frank House website, but what we’ve got here could be considered an Anne Frank starter kit, as it were. While some of these movies come across more effectively and more accurately than others, they can still potentially inspire viewers to find out more.
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
This classic George Stevens film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and is one of the first times Anne’s story was translated for the screen. Stevens interviewed dozens of hopefuls for the part of Anne, and some were even Dutch, but he finally settled on New Jersey native Millie Perkins.
The movie has been criticized for being too Hollywood-ized and Millie Perkins too old to play a young teenager (she was nineteen at the time), but it chillingly communicates the cramped conditions and strained nerves of the eight people in hiding.
The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank (1988)
The Attic is a satellite version of Anne’s history, told from the point of view of Miep Gies, one of the helpers, played by Mary Steenbergen. She heads up a fantastic cast, among them Paul Scofield, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, Huub Stapel and Lisa Jacobs.
It’s a beautiful, graceful film that won a Primetime Emmy award and seamlessly takes us from the actual streets of Amsterdam to a convincingly accurate recreation of the Secret Annex. Unfortunately Lisa Jacobs imitates a French accent the whole time, but that’s easily ignored as she puts in a great performance otherwise.
Anne Frank Remembered (1995)
Jon Blair’s Oscar-winning documentary came out at a perfect time, as in the mid-nineties lots of new information about Anne’s world had recently been made public, such as the real names of the people mentioned in Anne’s diary. Blair’s film also includes an interview with Peter Pepper, Annex member Fritz Pfeffer’s son, who died of cancer two months after his segment was taped.
Another aspect of the film that was widely touted at the time of release was its containing the only surviving moving images of Anne Frank. It might sound funny now, but YouTube was about a decade in the future and visual media was harder to come by.
The Diary of Anne Frank (2009)
I call this ambitious BBC production “Anne Frank On Hyperdrive,” because it somehow crams Anne’s two-year-plus-change diary into an hour and a half. The performances, especially that of Ellie Kendrick, who plays Anne, and Felicity Jones, who plays Margot, are quietly earnest, but everyone zooms through their lines and there’s not much time for anything to resonate.
Still, it’s a competent representation of Anne and the group in hiding and a good place to start for those who might be unfamiliar with the Secret Annex.
Love All You Have Left (2017)
A bereaved woman named Juliette finds a girl in her attic who claims to be Anne Frank, and as the two of them talk and get to know each other Juliette realizes she’s going to have to tell Anne about her fate. As the film goes on everything takes on a Sixth Sense-type quality, but I’m not going to spoil anything.
This indie film is good for what it is but its overall execution is a little bit weak. Anne acts like she walked out of High School Musical and the ending is muddy. Kudos to the filmmakers for thinking outside the box, though.
My Best Friend Anne Frank (2022)
This Dutch film just came to Netflix and is told from the point of view of one of Anne’s best friends, Hanneli Goslar, flashing between scenes of Hanneli and her younger sister, Gabi, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and her life in Amsterdam, culminating in Hanneli and Anne meeting in the camp on opposite sides of the barbed wire.
The movie has some inaccuracies, such as a scene in a movie theater when a guy tries to sneak a few kisses, which we know didn’t happen, and Anne and Hanneli playing in the Secret Annex before Anne went into hiding, which likely didn’t happen, either. It can also get a little sexually explicit, so it may not be for everyone. Still, it’s well-done and a nice new angle on Anne’s story.
It’s pretty safe to say that the world will never be done with Anne Frank, and it would be interesting to know what Anne would think if she could see the way people have chosen to remember her. After all, she did once write that she wished she could get to Hollywood, and in a way that dream has come true as well.