New Anne Frank movie on PBS

[Wyliefan]

On PBS this weekend (add traditional disclaimer about different airdates and times for different PBS stations). It sounds pretty well-made from all I hear. I'l probably take a look, and thought some of you might like to as well.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/andrew-ryan/anne-frank-updated-for-a-generation-that-needs-to-know/article1528141/

ETA: Sorry, I think it's actually a movie and not a miniseries. Can someone fix the thread title?

[AxelAnnie]

Don't know how to fix the title....but I have read that it is really good. The gal who plays Anne is fabulous

[Cloudy_Gumdrops]

Looking forward to seeing it. PBS is gonna have some other Holocaust themed movies coming on because of the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day stuff, so I'll be checking all of those out.

[nubka]

I managed to get a copy of this on DVD last year when it came out in the UK. It is very good and true to the the diary. As a matter of fact, this is the first movie where the Anne Frank Foundation has actually allowed Anne's own words to be used in the script.

All of the casting is spot on, especially Edith Frank. This movie really shows the real Anne, not some perfect "saint."

[Eden]

Thank you for posting that link, Wyliefan!

It's a perfect timing from PBS to air it on Sunday night, since in the evening of that day begins the Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel.
According to the Jewish tradition our days begin on the evenings and end on the evening of the next day.

As far as revealing new sides of Anne Frank (impatient and imature teenager who had criticism toward her mother and all): I remember there were some sort of publications regarding it few years ago.
IMO, it only made the impact of her story stronger.

[nubka]

Thank you for posting that link, Wyliefan!

It's a perfect timing from PBS to air it on Sunday night, since in the evening of that day begins the Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel.
According to the Jewish tradition our days begin on the evenings and end on the evening of the next day.

As far as revealing new sides of Anne Frank (impatient and imature teenager who had criticism toward her mother and all): I remember there were some sort of publications regarding it few years ago.
IMO, it only made the impact of her story stronger.

Yes, it did make quite a bit of news when the additional five pages of Anne's diary were returned to the Netherland's Department for War Documentation. Otto had held the pages back all those years because Anne had implied that her parent's marriage was a marriage of convienience. She actually showed sympathy for her mother, knowing that while Edith was truly in love with Otto, her love was not returned. Anne wrote that her father had admiration and respect for Edith as a mother, but not romantic love, and that it was was difficult for Anne to see her mother's love go unreturned. I think that Anne's observations were a bit too close for comfort as far as Otto was concerned.

There are some who feel that by holding back these pages, Otto did a disservice to Anne (by omitting from her diary,) the one time that Anne really did show understanding and compassion for her mother.

Of course, it's easy too look back and understand why Otto would not have wanted those observations to become public. Some of Edith's family (the Hollanders) have long felt that Otto married Edith because her large dowery was needed to clear up debts from when the Frank family banking business collasped. Otto was only human, and "arranged" marriages really weren't so uncommon back in the 20's. Anne felt strongly that her father had been deeply in love with someone else when he was a young man, that Edith sensed it and knew that she wasn't love of Otto's life and never would be...:(

[Wyliefan]

It surprises me a little that anyone ever thought of her as some perfect being, even going by the expurgated version. Even that version showed her being impatient, willful, etc., as I recall. Brave and intelligent and admirable, certainly, but not perfect.

[Eden]

In Israel she was always veiwed as a typical growing teenager who wrote about the difficulty of her time during Holocaust.
Defenetly, not as a saint. It is not allowed in Judaism to consider someone as saint, but as tzadik/righteous (a title which is usually given to super smart Rabbi).
Anne Frank belongs to K’doshey Hashoah/the Holocaust Holy Ones, a term that is used to describe the six million that were perished in Holocaust.

Rabbi Meir Lau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yisrael_Meir_Lau), a former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel and the Chairman of Yad Vashem, said once that as a Buchenwald survivor (at age of 8) he was at first puzzled as to why -out of all personal documentary about Holocaust - Anne Frank's Diary became the most known. Only later, when he grew up himself, he realized that the fact that Anne's diary talked about her feelings, relations and difficult conditions in a hiding place, and not about the horrors of Concentration Camps, that what made the huge impact.

[heckles]

It surprises me a little that anyone ever thought of her as some perfect being, even going by the expurgated version.

Not perfect, but pretty amazing for her to endure hiding in the attic for so long and still opining that "people are truly good at heart."

[Wyliefan]

Oh yes, undoubtedly amazing.

It just seems a bit weird the way some people market the unexpurgated version: "The REAL Anne Frank! Warts and all! Not a saint! She actually had SEXUAL FEELINGS! Goodness gracious!" etc., etc. As if that version showed her having orgies in the attic or something. It almost seems to me that the "debunking" impulse that's so pervasive today is being applied to her, which I don't really like. I would just say, don't paint her as perfect and don't paint her as some amoral sensation-hungry adolescent with freaky dark secrets. Just take her for what she was: a bright and brave and amazing girl with normal tastes and feelings.

But maybe it's just me.

[Karina1974]

Oh yes, undoubtedly amazing.

It just seems a bit weird the way some people market the unexpurgated version: "The REAL Anne Frank! Warts and all! Not a saint! She actually had SEXUAL FEELINGS! Goodness gracious!" etc., etc. As if that version showed her having orgies in the attic or something.

Did you catch the part of the article where it mentions the "shocking scene" concerning Anne's discussion of her changing body?

Yes, it did make quite a bit of news when the additional five pages of Anne's diary were returned to the Netherland's Department for War Documentation.

Actually, there was a lot more than just 5 pages removed from Anne's diary and not part of the original publication. I've read the Definitive Version, and there is a lot more to it than the original, more sanitized Diary of a Young Girl that most people have read. When I do get around to reading her diary every couple of years, the DV is the one that comes off of the shelf.

[Wyliefan]

I did see that. But after all, it's a teenage girl in the 1940s experiencing normal changes, in a PBS movie, not a Kardashian doing an HBO special or anything. How shocking could it be?

(I know, I may regret asking that question . . . :lol: )

[Rex]

I thought David Mamet was preparing a film version of her diary - this version to focus more on her "Jewishness".

I have the DVD on Anne Frank: The Whole Story, but this version omits passages from her diary for legal reasons. Hannah Gordon-Taylor's resemblance to Anne is freakish.

[nubka]

I did see that. But after all, it's a teenage girl in the 1940s experiencing normal changes, in a PBS movie, not a Kardashian doing an HBO special or anything. How shocking could it be?

(I know, I may regret asking that question . . . :lol: )

Well, Anne does give a pretty detailed description in her diary about her vagina and clitoris. She also talks about sitting and using a mirror to get a really good look between her legs, lol! Of course, that's not going be in any movie. :yikes:

Karina, I think that most people now days do read the Definitive Edition. The original edition that Otto first published long ago was just so chopped up, and yes, lots of entries were omitted, but there were only five pages that were deliberately held back by Otto and "missing" all those years. They were given to a friend to hold onto with explicit instructions they were not to come forward until both Otto and Fritzi were dead.

I'm sure you have probably read The Critical Edition of Anne's Diary (1989.) To me, this is the best, because you can actually read all three versions of Anne's Diary side by side.

Version A is the actual diary that Anne originally wrote.

Version B is what Anne was re-writing, in addtion to keeping up with her regular diary entries. This was her version that she hoped to publish. She went back to the very beginning of her diary, editing, revising, adding to, and deleating what she felt was too childish/not interesting/too embarassing. She also added many of her short stories into Version B.

Version C was what Otto originally published after Anne's death. I would not recommend this version to anybody now that the Definative & Critical Editions are available. It was heavily edited by Otto, and translated by an middle-aged German woman who did not totally stay true to what Anne had written in Dutch, plus the publishers wanted all sexual references cut out.

As far Otto's involvement in the editing was concerned, he really didn't have many options. The diary was originally released as a series of articles in a magazine, so some entries had to be cut, because of length issues.

We are so fortunate that Anne was working on her Version B, because much of Version A was scattered and lost when the Gestapo trashed the Secret Annex during the August 4th arrest. Without Version B, a chunk of the diary would be missing forever (think of Version B as refined, yet souped up back-up disc of the original diary.)

The only drawback to The Critical Edition (at least the 1989 first edition,) is that the five pages Otto held back are missing from it.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but this is a subject that is very dear to my heart.

[berthesghost]

Thanks for all the info nubka!

Funny, even after watching the sanitized hollywood version, I never thought of anne as perfect or a saint. More like a typical teen with a gift for writing.

Now, if only they'd do 'the real story' of Bernadette Soubirous! I suspect there's a lot more sanitizing of image in that back story.