Anne Frank: The Whole Story
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| Anne Frank: The Whole Story | |
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 DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Robert Dornhelm |
| Produced by | David R. Kappes Kirk Ellis |
| Written by | Kirk Ellis |
| Starring | Ben Kingsley Hannah Taylor-Gordon Brenda Blethyn |
| Music by | Graeme Revell |
| Cinematography | Elemér Ragályi |
| Editing by | Christopher Rouse |
| Distributed by | ABC |
| Release date(s) | May 20, 2001 |
| Running time | 189 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English, Dutch, German, French, Hebrew |
| IMDb profile | |
Anne Frank: The Whole Story (also known as Anne Frank) was a mini series based on the book Anne Frank: The Biography by Melissa Müller. The mini series was shown on ABC on May 20, 2001. Controversially, but in keeping with the claim made by Melissa Müller, the series asserted that the anonymous betrayer of the Frank family was the office cleaner, when in fact the betrayer's identity has never been established. A disagreement between the producers of the mini-series and the Anne Frank Foundation about validity of this and other details led to the withdrawal of their endorsement of the dramatisation, which prevented the use of any quotations from the writings of Anne Frank appearing within the production. Taylor-Gordon received both Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for her performance as Anne Frank, while Ben Kingsley won a Screen Actor's Guild Award for his performance as Otto Frank, Anne's father.
Contents |
[edit] Cast
- Ben Kingsley - Otto Frank
- Brenda Blethyn - Auguste van Pels
- Lili Taylor - Miep Gies
- Hannah Taylor-Gordon - Anne Frank
- Tatjana Blacher - Edith Frank
- Jessica Manley - Margot Frank
- Joachim Król - Hermann van Pels
- Nicholas Audsley - Peter van Pels
- Jan Niklas - Fritz Pfeffer
- Rob Das - Jan Gies
- Johannes Silberschneider - Johannes Kleiman
- Peter Bolhuis - Victor Kugler
- Ela Lehotska - Bep Voskuijl
- Jade Williams - Hanneli "Hannah" Goslar
- Victoria Anne Brown - Jacqueline van Maarsen
[edit] Plot
The film begins with Anne as a ten year old girl with many friends and admirers. Her grandmother moves in with her and her family in their apartment, and Anne's father, Otto, owns a business. Anne's best friend at this point is Hannah Goslar, whose family Anne disdains as being "too religious".
Soon, Anne realizes her world begins changing around her, and eventually the Nazis invade Holland. Anne gets increasingly distressed as her rights are taken away, as well as ominously being forced to register as Jews with the government and to wear yellow stars. She is then forced to leave her school and attend a Jewish Lyceum, where she meets her new best friend, Jacqueline van Maarsen, who is only half-Jewish. She also meets Hello Silberberg, whom she develops a crush on (it is implied Hello likes her too). On her 13th birthday, she receives the famous checkered-patterned diary and she immediately goes to her room to write her first entry. A few weeks later, on a normal Sunday in July, Margot receives a call-up from the Germans to be deported to a death camp in the East. Otto Frank moves his family into the now-renowned "Secret Annex", followed soon by the van Pels and their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer, the Frank family's dentist.
During their stay in the annex, the van Pels family are seen for their constant bickering, Fritz is seen as an antagonist of Anne's, and Anne gets into her first serious relationship with Peter, all while wishing for an end to the war. Anne also gets her first period while in the annex - an occasion she'd been waiting anxiously for. A thief, one night breaks into the building below the annex, leaving the eight refugees in terror.
Eventually, the Franks are betrayed by the cleaning woman Lena Hartog, in the business in which the annex resides. The eight people in hiding are arrested. Anne's diary is dumped onto the floor while the Germans search for money. Otto reveals his history as a German veteran during World War I. Two of the helpers are also arrested.
Afterwards, the Franks are sent on a passenger train to Westerbork, a transit camp, where Anne and her family and friends are held in the criminal "S Barracks". There, Anne meets a woman named Janny Brandes and her sister Lientje, who are later seen with Anne in Bergen-Belsen. Anne and her family are soon transported to Auschwitz, where the women are stripped of their clothing and their hair is shorn, she is separated from her father and the other men.
During a selection for women in the camp to go to a safer place to a munitions factory, Anne's mother and sister are chosen, but Anne is not, and therefore, Edith and Margot choose to remain behind. Anne and Margot are sent to a scabies barracks and later deported to Bergen-Belsen, which is no more than many large tents on a muddy ground surrounded by an electric fence. Mrs. van Pels eventually arrives at the camp to find Anne very thin and Margot sick with typhus. Anne, one night, sees her old friend, Hannah, through the fence. Hannah is a privileged prisoner, and she tells Anne that her father is dying but her sister is alive. She throws a package with bread and socks over to Anne.
In the last scene with Anne, Margot and Anne talk about times past, but Margot then falls out of bed and dies of shock. Anne, whose will to live is finally gone, looks up into the sky, defeated.
After the war, it is revealed that Otto is, in fact, alive. He looks for information about his daughters, but has no luck in doing so until referrenced to find Janny Brandes who survived the camp. Otto is told that Anne died a few days after Margot. Miep, who helped the Franks, gave Otto Anne's preserved diary. Otto reads the entire thing, then goes up to the now empty annex and collapses in a crying heap in front of Anne's wall, still plastered with movie star photos. Then, the film tells what happened to everyone mentioned in the film and the film ends.
[edit] Trivia
- The ABC project was not sanctioned by Bernd Elias, Anne Frank's cousin and chairman of the Anne Frank Fonds (which owns copyright of Anne's diary), as a result, the film cannot directly quote "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl".
- Steven Spielberg was to be the executive producer, but declined after receiving a letter from Anne Frank's relatives asking him not be involved with the project because it was not based on the authorized account of Franks' life.
- The façade for an entire block was built on the water in Prague for the Prinsengracht set.
- In preparation for one of the dream sequences, Hannah Taylor-Gordon (Anne Frank) took ice skating lessons, though she did have a stunt double for the more challenging skating moves.
- Scenes were set up so photographs could be taken on the set, such as the Franks' wedding and Anne at a desk.
- Hannah Taylor-Gordon's siblings appear as extras.
- All four female leads: Hannah Gordon-Taylor, Jessica Manley, Tatjana Blacher, and Brenda Blethyn all agreed to lose their hair for the scenes in the concentration camps.
[edit] Goofs
- Otto tells Miep and Edith that his sister asked him to send Anne and Margot to live in London with her.It was actually his cousin Milly who asked for Margot and Anne to be sent to London, not his sister, Leni, who lived in Switzerland.
- When the betrayer gives the address of the hiding place to the Gestapo on the phone, she says the address is 263 Lindtstradt.The actual address was 263 Prinsengracht.
- Janny and Lientje's last name is Brandes.Brandes was Janny's married last name.Lientje's married last name was Rebling.If the film had them using the same last name, they should have been called Janny and Lientje Brilleslijper.
- Anne's concentration camp number in this film is A-25063.Actually,her number is unknown since camp records have been destroyed.The women from the transport from Westerbork that Anne was in were tatooed with numbers between A-25060 and A-25271.The number that Anne has in the film could have probably been Anne Frank's real number since A-25063 is one of the numbers that were given to the women who were in the same transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz as Anne.
[edit] Home Video Release
Anne Frank: The Whole Story was released on VHS and DVD on August 28, 2001 by Buena Vista Home Entertainment.There is not much difference from the DVD and VHS version of this movie since the only special feature on the DVD is only a trailer of a movie.
