Ellie Kendrick as Anne Frank
PBS’s new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank is a must-see for everyone this Sunday night on PBS Masterpiece Classic at 9 PM local time. The film is powerful, how could it not be? Ellie Kendrick, the actress who portrays Anne, is perfect for the part. She is not beautiful like young model Millie Perkins, the 1959 Anne (and hand-picked by Otto Frank, Anne’s father), or 16-year-old Natalie Portman, another beautiful young actress.
Anne Frank learns she is going into hiding
Ellie is more realistic, like the actual Anne – dark-haired, good looking, a little awkward, and on the cusp of womanhood.
Watching the film, I could not help but compare Anne Frank to a young and precocious 15-year old Jane Austen, who in her teens wrote the delightful but irreverent The History of England. Both Jane and Anne changed the world of literature with their writing. Both died too soon, Anne tragically of typhoid fever in Bergen-Belsen. The family had been in hiding for two years and one month before they were betrayed by a Dutch informant. My heart always aches when I think of how close Anne came to making it in that notorious concentration camp, for she and her sister died just months shy of liberation.
Albert Dussel joins the Franks and Van Daans. L to R: Tamsin Greig as Mrs. Frank, Iain Glen as Otto, Felicity Jones as Margot, and Ellie Kendrick as Anne
Anne Frank’s story has always loomed large in my life. I spent my childhood years in Holland, as did Anne. My Oma in Utrecht lived near an apartment complex that was similar to Anne’s in this short video. I recall playing with my brother in streets that uncannily resembled the one shot in the film.
Anne and Peter, young love
While Anne and her family, and the Van Daans and Albert Dussel hid in the attic, my 15-year-old step-father hid as a young girl on a Dutch farm in the southernmost tip of The Netherlands. The Franks were able to hide with the help of brave Dutch citizens, as my step-father did. The Franks followed the allied invasion of Normandy and the armies’ progress through Europe, just like my step-father, who pinned their every movement on a map (as in the film).
Keeping tabs on the Allieds' progress
I grew up listening to World War II lore and watching the movies. I grew up wishing with every fiber of my being that the Franks were liberated as both my stepfather and father had been.
Mr. Dussel helps Anne after the attic hideaway has been discovered
But that was not to be. One year before the war’s end, the Franks, Van Daans, and Albert Dussel were betrayed. All died except for Otto Frank. It is a testament to Anne’s humanity that, despite having to hide during the most formative of her young teen-aged years, she was able to write these beautiful words:
Anne Frank writes in her diary
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again”
My heart aches when I think of the loss of those millions of innocent lives in that senseless, hateful war (any war, for that matter). As I think about Anne and the life she was never able to live out, I am saddened by the fact that 65 years after her death so many of young people have never heard of her, or could care less about World War II. Even my nieces and nephew, whose great grandfather and great uncles died in a Japanese concentration camp, rarely give a thought to their sacrifices. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp of typhoid fever in March 1945. The war ended in Europe in May.
View from the attic, the Kerk
It is my hope is that every family will sit down on Sunday night to watch this film together … The final scenes in which the Frank family and Van Daam family are found and taken from their hiding place are heart-rending. April 11 is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Cast:
Miep Gies, Kate Ashfield (helped to hide the Franks)
Miep Gies finds the diaries
Peter van Daan, Geoff Breton (the young man Anne liked)
Peter Van Daan dies of exhaustion 3 days before his camp was liberated.
Hermann van Daan, Ron Cook (Peter’s father)
Hermann Van Daan
Victor Kugler, Tim Dantay (helped to hide the Franks)
Albert Dussel, Nicholas Farrell (Dentist, shared a room with Anne)
Albert Dussel
Johannes Kleiman, Roger Frost (helped to hide the Franks)
Bep Voskuijl, Mariah Gale (helped to hide the Franks)
Otto Frank, Iain Glen (father)
Otto Frank, only survivor
Edith Frank, Tamsin Greig (mother)
Edith Frank
Margot Frank, Felicity Jones (sister)
Margot Frank
Anne Frank, Ellie Kendrick
Anne Frank
SS Silberbauer, Robert Morgan (Nazi officer who captured the Franks)
Petronella van Daan, Lesley Sharp (Peter’s mother)
Petronella Van Daan
Adapted by Deborah Moggach
The Diary of Anne Frank Airs: Sunday, April 11, 2010, PBS Masterpiece Classic, 9 PM local time.
The film will be available for online viewing April 12 – May 11, 2010
More on the topic:
Actor Connection to Jane Austen Film Adaptations:
- Nicholas Farrell played Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park, 1981, and Mr. Musgrove in Persuasion, 2007
- Felicity Jones played Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, 2007
- Tamsin Greig played Miss Bates in Emma, 2009
Jane Austen's World 
Great review, I am really looking forward to viewing this program. Thank you!
I am wondering, considering the subject matter whether this film would be appropriate for children younger than 12.
yes i am 10 and i watched it. P.S very sad. :(
Yes, my class watched it because we are reading about this! Only for children over 10 or 11.
So there is nothing as far as nudity or vulgar language. I am planning on using this particular video with my 6th grade Social Studies class.
Heather, I would not let children younger than 12 watch this program without supervision. It is a frightening subject. That it truly happened is most frightening of all.
NOoooooOOOOoooooooOOO i watched it and yes it was frighting but i still watched it!
This was a lovely post and spoke to the heart. I’m still wavering about watching–I have always found the diary lovely, moving, and heart-breaking; I’m not sure I have it in me right now to actually watch that final scene….
I read Anne’s diary when I was fourteen and cried my heart out over it. She was such a wonderful writer even at that age. Her brave spirit simply shines out from the pages, and I wonder if I would be as courageous as her if I was in such a situation. I will definitely give this movie a try once my exams are over!
Thanks for sharing your family WWII experiences Vic. I also wanted to share that The Diary of Anne Frank is on the reading list for my local High Schools and I have sold countless copies over the years. Every time I hand it to a student I tell that it is one of the best books and the worst books they will ever read and will change how they look at humanity. It is a masterpiece.
I will watch with my almost 12 yr old daughter who had the book The Diary of Anne Frank for her reading class this year.
I am an English teacher and co-teach a Holocaust Studies elective with a social studies teacher. I use the Buena Vista version of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK in conjunction with the documentary, ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED. It’s fascinating for the students to actually see and hear Otto Frank and Miep Gies speaking in the documentary and then view the film version. The lessons Anne has left us about the importance of tolerance and acceptance are universal and everlasting. While the story is tragic and depressing, I try to share with students the importance of hope and what Anne would want for the world had she been able to survive.
I look forward to seeing this newest production.
post film, I have put a piece on my blog. I need to correct to say that she died of typhoid….
For anyone dealing with trauma, it is best not to watch the film. You may find my post illuminating. This is very comprehensive and helpoful and now at 3 a.m. my time, drained, I must go to bed… may the soul of Anne Frank have found peace. j
I awoke during the night and this movie had just begun to air. Needless to say I was compelled to watch it and not look at the clock. This movie is a must see for every human alive. We must never forget this dark dark time in our history and we must educate our children on this holocaust as well. Well done.
Watched the BBC version, and continue to be puzzled why the dentist, Fritz Pfeffer is always referred to as Albert Dussell – in the BBC film as well – which I understand was Anne’s nickname for him and translates to Mr. Nitwit. Even more odd was the ending text, describing the fate of the group, in which the van Pels were referred to as the van Daans, and Pfeffer was referred to as Dussell, as if this were his actual name. Nonetheless, this portrait of Pfeffer is by far the most sympathetic of all previous dramatizations, and for everyone in that cramped space, being memorialized by a teenage girl, treatment by the BBC version is probably more realistic. Pfeffer, along with everyone except Otto Frank, died in the camps, and Anne’s book is the only living history of these people. At least use their real names!
Valen ~the names were psuedonames given by Anne when she wrote the diary.
Yes, Susan, I know this. However, films based on her diary are not her diary, but re-creations of the actual events with Anne’s POV and diary as a guide. It is the only written account of this horrendous time in the attic, and all the people who went through this deserve to be made real, not just Anne and the Frank family members (and which they are in the Anne Frank Museum). For those who can’t or don’t go to the Museum, all we have are films and book.
The screenplays for the Diary films are written by others, with different interpretations of the events based on research and their fuller understanding of what it must have been like, and I wanted to point out that Anne’s pseudonyms should not be perpetuated in what has now become living history, and the second most-read book in the world. People need to be reminded of these individual’s real names, not the ones Anne gave them.
The Pfeffer family had to defend Fritz’ memory after the publication of the book, given that Anne was a teenage girl shut up with a man she didn’t know and was often quite mean-spirited in her observations. As beloved as Anne was, it is important to keep this in mind as we are reading, and watching this drama through the years to come. This group is representative of millions, each one had a name. A real name.
The official Anne Frank House Museum does an excellent job distinguishing the real names from the pseudonyms that Anne used. I believe that initially Otto Frank wanted to preserve his daughters’ words. His was a hard (and odd) tightrope walk. Fritz’s housekeeper wrote a scathing letter to Otto defending Fritz as a loving husband and father. It would have been nice to see the actual names in the closing credits.
This is an adaptation of the Diary. And while I don’t know this for sure, we would have to ask the writer, the production company personnel connected with the adaptation, and the Beeb but I suspect that they kept the names from the Diary because it is an adaptation.
SHE WAS SO CUTE
I like yout blog, this is nice article. I will add it to my RSS feed. Thanks.
Thanks everyone
dis artical is gud!
Durante a leitura a figura de Dussel sempre me simpatizou. Nesta anti comedia humana!
i was wondering that Anna Franklin come to our world again and i belive that thier is some one like her. she was so cute lovely…………………oh i can’t belive she wasn’t their again.
hej … jag vill bara säga några ord om anne frank
starkas anne frank som bode bara in i ett väg i nogra år tack före doms väner som gjede mat och såna saker för att överleva
sen den där hitler som dödade dom jag är så förvånad för den menniskan som avslojiade de
men det som jag har hört att han tog av sig livet för att han förlorade kriget det skulle kanse inte hända om han inte hade dödat många människor han tänker bara på sig själv
även om jag är bara 10 åring flicka som går i en vanlig
skolan. tack och hej
Otto and Edith were opposites. Otto was tall and thin. Edith was plump. Otto was outspoken. He loved being around people. Edith was shy and quiet. Otto also loved reading stories to his girls. Their nickname for him was Pim.
While Margot was mild-mannered, Anne was moody and had a temper. But she was also full of fun.
where did u get the dvd from and its soooo sad
Such a girl who always thought good about others and a cute-loving person working for mankind.
My mom always tought me about the holocost.
And when i saw this move i got determined to learn more. So i always wanted to go to the museme of your history. GOD BLESS YOU ANN FRANK.
Dear Vic, I was looking for Anne’s pictures on internet in order to put it in my english test and I found your blog! :)
Lovely surprise!
This tv series is really good, isn’t it?
In my school, students are reading Hanna’s suitcase (a book about a girl who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp), and as we are studying simple past I decided to put Anne’s biography in the test!
Adriana Zardini
hola quisiera saber como se llama la pelicula real de ana frank
[…] persecution from the Nazis during the second world war (see second world war facts). Credit: 1, 2, 3.Schools that Anne Frank Went ToAnne Frank started in a Montessori school before the rise of […]