Review of The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) by Edith N — 15 Jun 2008

Blasphemous though it may be, I sometimes stop and wonder if anyone would've heard of Anne had she not died. Then again, when they were captured, she was in the process of revising her diary for publication. I think we might still have a published memoir of/by Anne Frank, but I suspect it would not be required reading in the schoools. There are similar books by and about other people in hiding, children who grew up without being able to run and play. There's [i]The Upstairs Room[/i], by Johanna Reiss--and it sequel, [i]The Journey Back[/i], about her family's life after the war. (Only her mother died.) True, Reiss's book is best read by younger kids--I read Frank's diary in high school--but if we focus on the living, perhaps we will forget the dead.

And [i]The Diary of Anne Frank[/i] is about the dead. There was but one survivor from what Anne called the [i]Achterhuis[/i], what we now call the Secret Annex. (Some uneducated person over at IMDB wondered what happened to the people, because the ending is ambiguous. Never mind that it flat-out tells us that everyone but Otto Frank died.) Anne died of typhoid a month before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, only a few days after her sister, Margot, died. Edith Frank, her mother, died of starvation at Auschwitz. The "van Daans," really the van Pels, also died--Mr. van Pels gassed at Auschwitz, Mrs. van Pels probably in the march to Theresienstadt, and Peter one day short of the liberation of Mauthausen. Mr. Pfeffer, who joined the group later, died of various causes in Sachsenhausen.

On the other hand, it is also about the living. After all, the book, of necessity, ends before the Franks and the others died. While the movie gives us an afterword that relates the residents' fates, the real story is the [i]life[/i] in the [i]Achterhuis[/i]. Okay, Anne changed things, and all we really see is Anne's side--as the living loved ones of the others are careful to remind us, and rightfully so. But we see more about the living than the dying, simply because that's where the real story is. We have the joyous celebrations, the fears, the fights. What the Diary, and the film, drive home to us is that these were real people. The millions of dead were all real people. All of them lived and loved. All of them were [i]real[/i], and we know this because Anne was.

She does come across, in her own writing, as a little perfect. They've toned her way down in the movie, but they've cast too old an actress. We cannot remember that this Anne is supposed to be thirteen, because she looks half again as much or more. She's [i]young[/i], but she's not that young. Even as Anne ages, 21-year-old Millie Perkins looks too old. On the other hand, Joseph Schildkraut, who plays Otto Frank, looks too old. He's only supposed to be in his fifties, and he looks older. Now, it [i]works[/i] for after the war. But it doesn't for before, when he's supposed to be healthy--if not young. Diane Baker, who played Margot Frank, was a year older than Millie Perkins, and Richard Beymer (Ben Horne!), who played the older, Margot's-age Peter, was indeed Diane Baker's age. On the other hand, Shelley Winters was ideal in her Oscar-winning performance as Mrs. Van Daan. (And, yes, it's true that her Oscar is at the Anne Frank museum.).

So I guess the message of the film is twofold. First, [i]remember[/i]. Remember Anne, for one, and her family and friends who died. Remember, too, the courage of those who hid her and untold others. The other message, however, is [i]live[/i]. Remember Anne and her joyous Hannukah celebration. (It's been a long time since I've read the book, but I don't think it's in there. I do know that Mr. Pfeffer would not have confused Hannukah and St. Nicholas Day, as he was an Orthodox Jew.) They [i]lived[/i].