The Diary of Anne Frank **** (1959, Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Ed Wynn, Richard Beymer, Gusti Huber, Lou Jacobi, Diane Baker) – Classic Movie Review 4703

Director George Stevens’s harrowing 1959 wartime drama The Diary of Anne Frank films Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s Broadway play based on Anne Frank’s diaries to very considerable success as a triple-Oscar-winner for Best Supporting Actress (Shelley Winters), Best Black-and-White Cinematography (William C Mellor) and Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration (Lyle R Wheeler, George W Davis, Walter M Scott, Stuart A Reiss). Millie Perkins stars as Anne Frank.

With the screenplay by Goodrich and Hackett, it tells the real-life story of two Jewish families and a talky elderly dentist who hide out in a terribly cramped, confined Amsterdam warehouse attic for two whole years during the World War Two German occupation of Holland.

Father Otto Frank (Joseph Schildkraut) hides his wife Edith (Gusti Huber), his teenage daughter Anne Frank (Perkins) and her sister Margot (Diane Baker), but Anne starts to fall for the other family’s son Peter Van Daan (Richard Beymer).

The Diary of Anne Frank is a most sincere and affecting film, honouring the subject with due respect and reverence. But perhaps it does not quite do full justice to this much loved story, partly because of the painstakingly over-careful and overblown direction by Stevens, the over-long, three-hour running time, and the hesitant acting of the inexperienced young Perkins and Beymer.

Schildkraut (reprising his stage role), though, is first rate, while Winters and Lou Jacobi (reprising his stage role) are very impressive as Petronella and Hans, the Van Daan couple the Franks hide out with. Oscar-nominated Ed Wynn is also outstanding as Mr Albert Dussell. Douglas Spencer plays the shopkeeper Kraler, who hides the two Jewish families in his attic. Gusti Huber reprises her stage role as Edith Frank.

Also in the cast are Dodie Heath [Dody Heath], Gretchen Goertz, Charles Wagenheim and William Kirschner.

If the performances by the older cast members are tremendous, the film is technically outstanding, too, with the Amsterdam location filming plus the 20th Century Fox studio photography and the art direction to the fore. All the attic scenes were shot on 20th Century Fox’s largest sound stage in Hollywood.

It is based on the book Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

It is remade in by Boris Sagal for TV in 1980 as The Diary of Anne Frank, with Melissa Gilbert as Anne Frank.

Shelley Winters later donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank Museum.

Winters went on to a second Oscar with A Patch of Blue (1966).

The cast are Millie Perkins as Anne Frank, Joseph Schildkraut as Otto Frank, Shelley Winters as Petronella Van Daan, Richard Beymer as Peter Van Daan, Gusti Huber as Edith Frank, Lou Jacobi as Hans Van Daan, Diane Baker as Margot Frank, Douglas Spencer as Kraler, Dodie Heath as Miep Gies, Ed Wynn as Albert Dussell, and Orangey as Mouschi.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4703

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