Diary of Anne Frank, the

A nationwide search for an unknown actress to portray Anne Frank resulted in the casting of a young model named Millie Perkins. While some critics felt that Perkins was too old to play the 13 year old Anne, I think she does a good job here and doesn't really look too old for the part at all. Her voice is a tad shrill in the voice-over monologues but otherwise she is fine. Shelley Winters won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Mrs. Van Daan and Joseph Schildkraut is also memorable as Otto Frank, Anne's father.

The only major fault with the film is its length - at 170 minutes, it is sometimes slow moving. The best sequences are the ones in which the safety of the families are threatened. These sequences are extremely well done and will have you on the edge of your seat in suspense.

Fox has done a good job with the care and resoration of this film for dvd. The picture is presented in its original widescreen format and is sharp and detailed with good contrasts between black and white. Alfred Newman's complete 7 minute overture to the film is also included here.

The supplements on side two of the dvd are fantastic. A 90 minute documentary features interviews with Shelley Winters, Millie Perkins, George Stevens Jr., as well as Holocaust historians and family and friends of the Frank family. This documentary is excellent, in some ways as interesting as the film itself, and answers many questions that you may have after seeing the film. The documentary also shows how parts of the films were sanitized for the 50s audiences. Other features includes Academy Awards footage, film premiere footage, stills gallery, Millie Perkins screen test and a feature on the career of director George Stevens.

Despite being forced by Fox to shoot his film in the widescreen process of Cinemascope, director George Stevens nevertheless managed to capture the claustrophobic atmosphere of a regime slowly closing in on the Frank's precarious abode. Stevens, a member of the first American film corps that liberated several Nazi concentration camps with the allies, was appalled by the overwhelming scope of genocide he encountered. His outrage is channeled on this occasion into a poignant, visceral and emotionally stirring production that not only manages to capture the essence of the period, but rightfully preserves the memory of Anne Frank - a young girl, aged well beyond her years, who had the clairvoyance to put onto paper one of the most heartbreaking and genuine accounts of the second world war.

Fox gives us a stunning B&W anamorphic picture with zero film grain, solid blacks, fine detail and remarkable clarity. Really, there's nothing to complain about in this visual presentation. The audio is equally impressive. The musical score is spread across all five channels and offers a genuinely moving experience.
The extras include a 90 minute documentary on the real Anne Frank, the film and WWII, some period featurettes and the original theatrical trailer.

Absolutely no scene in movie history is as simultaneously gripping and gently conveyed as the final scene, when Peter Van Damme and Anne Frank hold hands and look out to the sky as the Gestapo beat down their door to take them to a death camp. The adults look down in the direction of the door and stand or sit still and wait for them to enter, resigned to the fact that they just can not escape the fate that the Nazis have assigned to them.

Nobody runs or even speaks, and Otto Frank puts down the newspaper and hands his wife her bag, as if they are going on a trip. Such small simple movments convey such finality for these 7 people who have shared the unimaginable experience of being caged liked animals to escape being killed like animals, because one man in power decided people of their religion and race should not live.

That scene says more than a million car chases and explosions. Watch it and see what I mean.