Anne Frank Remembered

`Anne Frank Remembered' authenticates the life of a young girl whose world was destroyed by hatred and prejudice.

It's easy to see why "Anne Frank Remembered" walked off with the best documentary Oscar last month. Jon Blair's film, which exhaustively explores the life of the teenage Jewish girl who has long been a symbol of the 1 1/2 million children exterminated by the Nazis, is absolutely riveting.

And what makes it so effective is that Blair goes far beyond the symbol and finds the truth about a complicated girl who could be "naughty" and "impertinent," and whose feelings for her father, her mother and her older sister Margot were quite complex.

In other words, "Anne Frank Remembered" makes her human.

In addition to archival materials, newsreels, rare photos and personal correspondence that has not been made public before, as well as a couple of star players — Kenneth Branagh narrates and Glenn Close reads diary excerpts — Blair uses a technique that proved equally effective in Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah." That is, he employs a number of on-camera witnesses, so that everyday life in hiding and in concentration camps is calmly and specifically detailed by those who experienced it.

These testimonies are the most powerful elements in an already extremely powerful film. And they also give us more fully rounded characters in Anne Frank and her family than have been previously revealed.

Most of us are familiar with them strictly through Anne's diary, of course, first published in 1947 (it's sold more than 25 million copies in some 50 languages) and subsequently adapted as a play and later, a film.

And it's been 41 years since "The Diary of Anne Frank" hit Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize, and 37 years since the film was nominated for several Oscars (it won three).

So it's somewhat surprising to realize "Anne Frank Remembered" is the first film to attempt a comprehensive overview of her life.

Blair traces Anne's heritage, her parents' marriage, the family's wealthy lifestyle before it was forced to go into hiding for two years, and then their separation when they were sent to a labor camp, following their betrayal and capture.

Among the remarkable materials on display here are television interviews with Otto Frank, Anne's father, and even a brief piece of home-movie footage of a local wedding that captures Anne high in a window, watching the proceedings with enthusiasm.

Anne began keeping her diary at age 13, and later, when she decided the writings might make her famous one day, she edited some of it herself. As a result, the work and life of the young teenager were highly criticized in some corners, and the diary became quite controversial. It was 1980 before the book was finally authenticated!

So it's worth noting that, among other things, "Anne Frank Remembered" is important for having humanized its central character and for "authenticating" her life.

"Anne Frank Remembered" is not rated but would doubtless get a PG for disturbing, wartime newsreel footage.