The Diary of Anne Frank

Although a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play preceded it, director George Stevens's The Diary of Anne Frank is the earliest filmed version of the biographical work, and the standard for the many miniseries and plays that have followed in the past five decades. Fifty years later, the movie is still a powerful, touching drama. There's an appropriate balance of foreboding, inter-personal drama, and even humor. Upbeat scenes in which Anne gives out small homemade Hanukkah gifts or prances around wearing Mrs. Van Daan's beloved mink coat contrast beautifully with more haunting images of the confined trying desperately not to make noise as an unexpected thief trashes the office below or of Anne's nightmares of what's happened to her captured, concentration camp-bound friends. Excerpts from the diary are mixed in with the original dialogue, which captures the way domestic minutia can easily turn into heated drama under the emotionally charged circumstances.

At 180 minutes, the movie runs at least 30 minutes too long, and it seems now that Millie Perkins was miscast for the seminal role. Looking like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood, Perkins is almost too beautiful to play Anne, and her sing-songy tones make her sound more pouty and melodramatic than precocious. Perkins does have a believable chemistry with Beymer (Tony from West Side Story), who does an impressive job of darting furtive, smoldering glances at Anne throughout the movie. Winters and Jacobi are spot-on as the meddling, tactless Van Daans -- especially Winters, who knows how to steal a scene. Unlike some of the more contemporary television versions, this original is so much more than a glorified after-school special; it's a poignant drama about possibly the most inspiring diarist of the 20th century.