The Diary of Anne Frank -- superb drama from the BBC

[Pearly Di]

The BBC are broadcasting this drama based on Anne's diary every night this week at 7pm. Half-hour episodes.

It's absolutely excellent.

Young Ellie Kendrick bears a remarkable and moving resemblance to the real Anne and her performance is wonderful: she really seems to radiate the spirit of Anne, not as some saintly legend but as the stroppy, hormonal, intelligent teenager she really was.

All the cast are superb but Tamsin Grieg and Lesley Sharp shine particularly as Edith Frank and Petronella van Daan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/annefrank/about.shtml

The drama captures the claustrophobia, the difficult living conditions of being cooped up in the Annexe -- the lack of privacy, the petty squabbles (in which Anne's father, Otto, is like a rock), suddenly interrupted by the terror of an air raid or the suspicion that their hideaway has been discovered. Outside their narrow hiding place, the horror is gathering.

Intensely moving, and important TV.

[Pearly Di]

[Primula Baggins]

I meant to post here! But I was up all night kiyoodling.

I very much want to see this, and I hope it will make its way over here in a proper way. Unfortunately most BBC dramas (and Doctor Who) seem to be cut at least slightly, even for public television here, and the only way to be sure we're seeing what was filmed is to watch it on DVD.

I discovered this in a completely delightful way the first time I watched the Firth & Ehle Pride and Prejudice on DVD. Whole new scenes! New snippets of dialogue! It was like opening a present, after having watched my homemade VHS tapes half to death.

Anyway. I trust it will get here eventually.

[Pearly Di]

I meant to post here!

Prim, you always respond.

I wasn't upset. I'd already posted about this on my Live Journal and got some responses. I just thought Hall of Fire folks would be interested too.

But I was up all night kiyoodling.

I hope it wasn't painful.

I very much want to see this, and I hope it will make its way over here in a proper way. Unfortunately most BBC dramas (and Doctor Who) seem to be cut at least slightly, even for public television here, and the only way to be sure we're seeing what was filmed is to watch it on DVD.

Cut? Boo.

This is an outstanding production.

The scenes between Anne and her mother, and then her father (she rowed with them a lot in tonight's episode) made me cry. Tamsin Grieg as Edith Frank breaks my heart. *

And Anne is such a fourteen year old. She's just like me at that age: I was AWFUL to my mother!

She's stressing about periods and boys and her first kiss and being cooped up and her parents not understanding her and then ... there's an air raid, or they all fear they've been discovered, and the huge, icy terror that surrounds them comes home to roost.

* I knew that Margot and Anne were eventually transported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where first Margot, then Anne, died of typhus. I did not realise that Edith was not with her girls: she was left behind in Auschwitz, where she died of starvation.

Last episode tomorow. We all know what's going to happen.

It is unbearably poignant, watching these perfectly normal, fallible people, trying to be as normal as they can, knowing they are about to be swallowed up in that monstrous tsunami of mass murder.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, Di, it's always a pleasure to respond to your posts.

Kiyoodling is a word I read in a book by an author who grew up in the Midwest before WWI. It may be real slang (for messing about, partying, generally raising hell) or it may be a word he made up. I just like it.

(I was actually working, getting my comments and changes on the copyedit of my third book together, and it ended up taking all night.)

I'm glad there continue to be new productions of the Anne Frank story, and that kids read it in school. It's an important story because it makes a fading piece of history real and personal, even to young people. We can't allow ourselves to forget.

[Pearly Di]

Kiyoodling is a word I read in a book by an author who grew up in the Midwest before WWI. It may be real slang (for messing about, partying, generally raising hell) or it may be a word he made up. I just like it.

I like it too.

(I was actually working, getting my comments and changes on the copyedit of my third book together, and it ended up taking all night.)

I'm glad there continue to be new productions of the Anne Frank story, and that kids read it in school. It's an important story because it makes a fading piece of history real and personal, even to young people. We can't allow ourselves to forget.

Absolutely.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm interested in this, too. But it's hard to comment too much on something that there is no chance that I will see in the near future.

[Impenitent]

I hope it gets to Oz, because I've had no luck getting my girl to read the book. She tells me she's started reading it several times, got no further than 10 or so pages and puts it down. Not interesting to her.

And yet she can cite any Artemis Fowl book verbatim.

Sigh. Perhaps a dramatic production would capture her.

[Alatar]

Di,

How suitable for kids is it? My eldest is 10 and the other two are 7 and 3. (obviously I'm not expecting it to be suitable for the younger children, but is 10 a bit young?)

[Pearly Di]

Di,

How suitable for kids is it? My eldest is 10 and the other two are 7 and 3. (obviously I'm not expecting it to be suitable for the younger children, but is 10 a bit young?)

It's on in 10 minutes so I hope you see this.

Been out all day at a funeral.

It's difficult for me to judge. It's going to be very sad, obviously, tonight, and considering it's a 7pm showing time I find it very adult and sober stuff -- but that's why they're showing it at 7pm of course, they want the maximum audience.

I think it probably depends on the ten year old ...

I was at a child's funeral today, and there were children present at that (all very beautiful and appropriately done).

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Oh dear.

I accept all you say Di but I just can't bring myself to watch it. It cuts too closely. I sometimes regret having read widely.
Tamsin Grieg and Lesley Sharp are an automatic guarantee of quality.

[Inanna]

One of the days of my life that I will never forget is the day R and I took a tour of the Anne Frank Haus in Amsterdam. I had read the book as a girl, and it was on my must-list during our weekend in Amsterdam.

If I can get my hands on this, I will watch it. I think. Am turning into quite a coward, though.

[samaranth]

We went there too when we first travelled overseas. It was also a must see, though mainly for me because my husband hadn't actually read the book. (It had been a set text at school and he'd rebelled.)

We sat at breakfast that morning in our little hotel near the Singel Canal, and I heard the bells of the Westerkerk. I found that - and (later that day) looking out of the window of the house itself and seeing the chesnut tree - made it real, immediate and heartbreaking in a way no history lesson had ever done.

I'd be interested to hear how they dealt with that last tragic chapter, Pearl.

[Pearly Di]

I'd be interested to hear how they dealt with that last tragic chapter, Pearl.

Extremely well.

SPOILERS (well, not really spoilers ... we all know what happened, right?


Food and other materials were beginning to run out as the war deepened. The situation in the Annexe was deteriorating. Then they were betrayed (nobody knows by whom) and discovered.

Poor Anne is so scared, as are her mother and sister. She is comforted by the kindly Fritz Pfeffer, the fiftysomething dentist she despised and called Albert Dussel in her diary.

Horribly ironic moment -- one of the SS officers holding them at gunpoint and coolly tipping the contents of Otto's suitcase onto the floor (in case there were any valuables :rolleyes) realises that Otto fought for Germany in WW1.

It all ended with the little group hugging each other (after all their arguments) and then leaving, Anne casting one last look at the Annexe before she left it. As each person comes down the stairs, the text on the screen tells you their fate. They all died in the camps -- Mrs van Pels (called Mrs van Daan by Anne) died on one of the 'death marches'. All except Anne's father, Otto, of course.

The last scene showed a shattered Miep Gies picking up Anne's diary from the floor.

Historical footnote: Miep kept the diary safe but when Otto was able to return, she did not show it to him, in case Anne was ever found alive (the diary is full of intimate stuff, after all). When Anne's death was confirmed, Miep then gave the diary to Otto. I found this out from the BBC4 doc showed afterwards, which had clips of interviews with Anne's father, who died in 1980, and the relatives of the Franks and Pfeffers. And with the wonderful and courageous Miep Gies, who went to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam to plead for her friends and colleagues ... an act of outstanding courage (once you were though that door, you had no idea if you would ever come out again). She came over as a wonderful woman: so compassionate and gentle.

There were also interviews with a few women who had met Edith, Anne and Margot Frank when they were incarcerated in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. It is terrible to imagine what the last few months of their lives must have been like.