Anne Frank Remembered Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Anne Frank Remembered Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 29, 2020

Prinsengracht is just one of many colorfully named canal streets in Amsterdam, and like many of its “siblings”, it’s incredibly picturesque, with shops abounding at various intersections where bridges cross the water, and with other landmarks like the Westerkerk, a monolithic church with a towering spire where, if you’re there on the right day, you can see some “performance art” as a clock keeper pokes his head out of a little window toward the top of the steeple to interact with people below. One of the reasons there are people below is due to a building just a couple of doors away from the Westerkerk, an unassuming rowhouse with a black door that you’d probably walk right by without paying any attention if you didn’t know it was one of the most iconic locations in 20th century history — the former office building of Otto Frank, a building whose “secret annex” housed the Frank family and an assortment of others for around two years after the Nazis invaded Holland.

Anne Frank Remembered offers what old time radio star Paul Harvey might have called "the rest of the story" to those only familiar with Anne's harrowing experiences from The Diary of Anne Frank. That film, and the stage play which was its source, offered some of the basic information about the Franks' lives in their supposedly secret hiding place, but as is the case with so many plays and movies "based on real life", things were dramatized or even outright fictionalized. One of the things Anne Frank Remembered discusses in passing, though, is how the actual source for both the play and film, Anne's diary itself, took a while to actually become a publishing phenomenon even after Otto managed to get it into print (something that in and of itself was a bit of a trial). At least the play and then the movie helped spread the fame of Anne's diary, though perhaps certain misconceptions about Anne and her family had by then been "baked into" the general public consciousness.

Part of telling a story is having storytellers, not to state the obvious, and it's one of Anne Frank Remembered's strongest contributions that it offers a number of first person accounts from people who knew Anne, the rest of the Franks, and the other people who hid out in the secret annex. Chief among these interview subjects is the amazing Miep Gies, the Vienna born Dutch citizen who was an employee of Otto Frank, and who became the family's protector in chief as well as their literal lifeline to the outside world after they went into hiding. Gies offers all sorts of insights here, including some memories of Mrs. Frank in particular which are filled with candor. And in fact both Mrs. Frank and Anne herself come in for a bit of "reassessment" from various people, with Mrs. Frank sounding increasingly neurotic as things devolved (and who could blame her, really?), and Anne's evidently frequent tendency toward provocative behavior already a constant even before the Nazis invaded.

It's in these personal reminiscences from people who knew Anne, her family, and the others in the secret annex that Anne Frank Remembered really attains palpable emotional impact. The most moving moment may well be Miep meeting the son of Dr. Pfeffer, the dentist who joined the group and shared a room with Anne, but there are any number of other very emotionally wrought memories here that bring both Anne's story and the entire context of that time rather viscerally alive. Anne Frank Remembered won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and it's an intensely intimate document that memorializes both the best and worst that Mankind has to offer.

Anne Frank Remembered Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Anne Frank Remembered is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics, an imprint of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This documentary was actually originally a television broadcast, later matriculating to the big screen in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The first thing that will probably upset some videophiles is that this release has been reframed for 1.78:1. That may not sound like a big difference, and in the grand scheme of things it probably isn't, but the framings throughout this presentation are often very tight, with the tops of heads getting lopped off pretty regularly, as can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review. But even apart from the framing issues, this presentation, while evidently sourced from a 4K remaster (according to an email from director Jon Blair reproduced on our Forum), this has a kind of flat, "video"-esque looking appearance, with a rather splotchy accounting of grain, and I'm wondering if perhaps the master was culled from a telecine prepared for broadcast. The palette is probably the strong suit here, and the contemporary interview segments often offer various nicely saturated hues on things like outfits. A lot of the archival video and stills are fairly ragged looking, as should probably be expected.

Anne Frank Remembered Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Anne Frank Remembered features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 rejiggering of what I assume was the documentary's original stereo audio. This is a piece that frankly (no pun intended) doesn't cry out for surround sound, and the "immersive" qualities of this track are limited in any case since the bulk of it is either Kenneth Branagh's narration or some of the interview subjects, who all function as "talking heads". Carl Davis' score, which echoes some of his Prokofiev-esque cues for The World at War (ironically another Blu-ray release that had some aspect ratio controversy), does have some width and sounds nicely burnished throughout. Fidelity is fine and I noticed no issues of any kind whatsoever.

Anne Frank Remembered Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:05)

Anne Frank Remembered Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My wife and I visited Amsterdam last year (remember when we could travel places?), and one of the most moving experiences of our entire European vacation was the day we spent in and around the Anne Frank House and the museum which surrounds it. In fact part of the museum offered some video interviews, and my wife and I after watching Anne Frank Remembered think perhaps some of them were actually culled from this documentary, though our memories may be playing tricks on us (at least a couple of interviews were at least with the same people as are featured here). There was a curiously carnival like atmosphere that day, with that "performance art" alluded to above with the guy poking his head out of the clock tower on the Westerkerk, but also a bit more incongruously, with a musician in a little dinghy in the canal right there playing a toy trumpet and carillon and then lifting a wooden clog toward the people assembled above so that they could tip him. That element seemed kind of woefully out of place with the somberness of what the Anne Frank House represented, but it also perhaps as well as anything may have suggested how people tend to forget history, condemning them of course in Santayana's famous maxim to repeating it. Maybe that in and of itself should be enough to make the Anne Frank House all the more important, not to mention "remembrances" like this heartfelt and emotional documentary. I'm sure the video quality in general and reframing here are probably going to raise some hackles, but the content is remarkable. With caveats about video noted, Recommended.