The Diary of Anne Frank 50Th Anniversary Edition

Widescreen

Your Price $1.00

Starring: Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters
Director: George Stevens

Rating:
Number of Discs: 1
Running Time: 2:59
Color: COLOR

Selection #: 5331509
Studio: Fox Video
Theatrical Release: 1959

Format: Widescreen learn about formats >
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Description
Director George Stevens (Giant) adapts the famous stage play based on the international best seller Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Told from a movingly personal perspective, while shedding light on the shocking inhumanity of the Holocaust, a half-century later, the film remains a powerful, moving experience. Making almost no concession to “opening up” the play for the screen, the director keeps the action confined almost entirely to the Amsterdam attic where eight people hid from the Nazis for more than two years. Instead, Stevens masterfully uses his camera to search out the emotions of the attic’s inhabitants, and to convey the ordeal of confinement. In one extraordinary sequence, the camera tracks a cat as it silently makes its way across a countertop filled with dishes—while the terrified onlookers (and we, the audience) hold our collective breath, knowing that a single overturned dish means exposure. Recreating his stage role of Anne’s father, Otto Frank, Joseph Schildkraut anchors the film as a tower of quiet strength and grace under unyielding pressure. In her film debut, Millie Perkins brings an uncomplicated charm to the role of the adolescent Anne. (Ms. Perkins was 20 at the time.) And in the film’s most famous performance, Shelley Winters is unforgettable as the shrewish, frightened Mrs. Van Daan, earning the first of her two Best Supporting Actress Oscars® (her second was for 1965’s A Patch of Blue). Equally memorable performances are given by Ed Wynn as an elderly man who joins the families in hiding—a moving change of pace from his usual comic roles—Richard Beymer (still a few years away from his most famous role as Tony in West Side Story) as the Van Daan’s teenage son, and especially Austrian-born actress Gusti Huber as Mrs. Frank, desperately trying to hold her family together under the most harrowing of circumstances. Special Features for this 50th Anniversary Edition include, audio commentary by director George Stevens and star Millie Perkins, "making of" featurettes, newsreel footage, a photo gallery, theatrical trailers, and more.

Cast