Beyond the Attic
On the late-February night before the ABC miniseries on the life of Anne Frank was to in shooting scenes of her family’s leaving Holland and arriving in Auschwitz, it snowed in Prague. The city awoke to 8 inches of white draping every tree and soot-blackened Baroque statue. It was beautiful.
Not so, however, for the producers trying to tell the story of the German Jewish teenager and her famous diary, kept while she and her family were in hiding in Amsterdam, before being betrayed and shipped off to Nazi concentration camps. The snow, which continued off and on through the day and into the night, threatened to disrupt a full day of filming, even throw off the last two weeks of the production. At this point in the story, Anne and her family, after being discovered hiding in the annex to her father Otto Frank’s business, were taken to a Dutch transit camp, where they soon boarded trains to Auschwitz. They left Holland and arrived in Poland in the beginning of September. And there was no snow.
Ultimately, historical accuracy had to go. “If you’re Steven Spielberg [filming ‘Schindler’s List’], you can afford to wait” until conditions are right, says one member of the production team, but the ABC movie, rushing for an already tight May 20-21 airdate, didn’t have that luxury. The upside? The muddy snow and the general discomfort of the freezing actors added a level of grimness to the scenes.
From creating a script that doesn’t use a single word of Anne’s writing, arguably the source of the power of her story, to switching producers midstream, the snow was just one of many compromises made along the way by a production team striving to stay extraordinarily faithful to one of the most affecting stories of our time. At the same time, producers needed to satisfy audiences as diverse as the handful of still-living survivors who knew Anne to the millions who will be looking for a four-hour Sunday-and Monday-night TV escape.
Making a Holocaust-related movie is a process fraught with pitfalls, and taking on an icon as powerful as Anne Frank only adds to the challenge. The combination of “show business and the Holocaust is a difficult mix,” says Robert Dornhelm, director of ABC’s “Anne Frank.”
Still, across Europe, re-creations of World War II-era streetscapes, battlefields and concentration camps keep appearing, testament to pop culture’s extraordinary interest in the dramatic tales of brutality, tragedy, survival and heroism.
As “Anne Frank” is filming in Prague, at the other end of the former Czechoslovakia, in the Slovak Republic capital of Bratislava, a quarter-mile long, four-story high replica of Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto has been built for NBC’s upcoming miniseries on the 1943 Jewish uprising there. So many projects on the era are in the works that producers of “Uprising” say they had a hard time lining up enough period costumes for the movie, which will air in November. Feature films abound; “Anne Frank” barely got its cattle cars from one film in time for shooting.
Meanwhile, Prague residents last winter watched as a nine-building, exactingly detailed replica of Anne Frank’s Amsterdam block on Prinsengracht Street rose on the banks of the Vltava River. Built for $150,000, it was a fraction of what it would have cost to re-create the era and place in Amsterdam itself. Outside of town, replicas of the Auschwitz entrance gates and the barracks at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne died of typhus, could be found.
Even before embarking on the current production, ABC had run into roadblocks with the Anne Frank story. Along with producer Spielberg, ABC had hoped to do a remake of “The Diary of Anne Frank” but found that the rights were tied up (and have now gone to Fox 2000, one of the studio’s film producing divisions), says one executive familiar with the situation. So when Melissa Mller’s widely acclaimed, unrestrained “Anne Frank: The Biography” came out in 1998, ABC quickly bought the rights and enlisted Spielberg, who, in addition to “Schindler’s List,” has started the Shoah Foundation, which collects video histories of Holocaust survivors and produces documentaries on their stories.
By basing the movie on Mller’s book, which, in addition to the diary, relied on extensive document research and interviews with numerous people who knew the Franks, “I immediately thought this is an opportunity to place the story of the Anne Frank we all know and love in a broader historical context,” says Susan Lyne, ABC’s executive vice president of movies for television. “We can finally see what happened to Anne. The diary cuts off at a certain point.”
But, the production process underway, Spielberg soon received what one person familiar with the situation calls “an aggressive and emotional letter” from Bernd “Buddy” Elias, Anne’s cousin and chairman of the Swiss-based Anne Frank-Fonds, a foundation set up by Otto Frank, the sole survivor among his immediate family, who died in 1980. The Fonds holds copyrights to the diary and protects Anne’s legacy vigilantly; it also stands to benefit financially from the Fox movie, which is being written by Alfred Uhry (‘Driving Miss Daisy”). Although Mller quoted extensively from the diary’s different versions in her book and thanked Elias for his help, she also included some of the criticism the foundation has received for its secretive financial dealings and disputes with other organizations.
Elias asked Spielberg to withdraw, and, says the executive familiar with the situation, in the interest of not hurting ABC’s movie with a public relations fight, he agreed. Spielberg spokesman Marvin Levy says, “Steven did not want to do anything to disturb or upset the family or that would have upset the legacy of Anne Frank .... The family did not want to have it happen and it was respecting their wishes.”
Elias, reached in Basle, Switzerland, said that filming Anne Frank’s story without her words “is ignoring Anne Frank, in a way. The film can be good, but Anne speaks through her diary, through her words. [ABC] might be legally right but morally wrong, in my opinion.” He said he is also unhappy that the movie shows a cleaning lady betraying the annex residents. “That is an absolute theory, in no way proven,” he says, adding cryptically that he thinks the truth will come out at the end of this year.
But he and Fonds lawyer Peter Mosimann, a partner in the firm of Wenger Plattner, say ABC is legally wrong, as well, and has breached the “Diary” copyright. A reading of an early script they obtained through undisclosed channels rather than the network, Mosimann said, showed “substantial similarity between the two works.” Further legal action “is certainly possible,” he said, and the two sides continue to exchange letters. ABC sources said the network fully expects to air the program and has received no indication of legal action that could stop it.
A Fox spokeswoman said the studio has received a first draft of the film script from Uhry and is “very enthusiastic,” adding that “we don’t see ourselves in competition with the ABC movie” because the productions use two different sources.
Without Spielberg, ABC didn’t have one of the star names that could sell the movie to audiences; there was also fear that Ben Kingsley, who had starred in “Schindler’s List” and was cast in ABC’s movie as Otto Frank, would feel compelled to withdraw. But the two met at a dinner, Kingsley says, and Spielberg “gave me a big hug and said, “I’m so glad you’re playing Otto.”’
The cast also includes Brenda Blethyn (‘Secrets & Lies”) and German star Joachim Krol (‘Run Lola Run”) as the Van Pels, the couple who, along with their son, Peter, hid in the annex with the Franks. German actress Tatjana Blacher (‘Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace”) plays Anne’s mother, Edith Frank; 15-year-old British actress Jessica Manley plays Anne’s sister, Margot. Lili Taylor (‘High Fidelity “) plays Miep Gies, Otto Frank’s employee, the families’ main link with the outside world while in hiding and the finder of Anne’s diary. Because there wasn’t enough production time to cast a young Anne and an older one, Hannah Taylor Gordon, who turned 14 during the production and has appeared in such films as “Jakob the Liar,” was cast to play Anne from age 9 to 15.
Hans Proppe (ABC’s “Into Thin Air: Death on Everest”), the executive producer brought in to replace Spielberg, says he didn’t have to make “one casting compromise” with ABC. Unlike with many TV movies, “it was nice to be able to cast the film and not have to put in someone from an ABC series.”
The Fonds also pressured ABC, hoping to stop the production altogether; ABC and parent Disney instead went over the script with internal and outside legal counsel to make sure that it didn’t infringe on the “Diary” copyright.
The network has taken extraordinary care with the language used. Some lines were changed to make sure there wasn’t even a coincidental similarity to “Diary” lines, and writer Kirk Ellis, in a highly unusual move, was on the set during the entire shoot, to help maintain historical accuracy and also ensure that any last-minute script changes didn’t veer into forbidden territory. Once it was determined that it was on safe ground, ABC decided to proceed, and indeed the network is so pleased with the result that when the movie came in 15 minutes long, the network made plans to air the last hour without a commercial break rather than cut the movie, an unusual move in this cost-conscious day and age.
Aside from the unseemliness of fighting over a story that has brought inspiration to generations, without Anne’s words, what does the movie have? Much of the beauty and power of the original Anne Frank story as we know it come from her writing and the poignancy in her most famous line: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Then too screenwriter Ellis had the challenge of retelling an oft-told story, starting with the 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play and the 1959 film starring Millie Perkins, who plays Anne as a young, mascara-enhanced ingenue. A 1980 TV movie starred Melissa Gilbert; Mary Steenburgen starred as Gies in 1988’s “The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank.” The 1995 documentary “Anne Frank Remembered” won an Oscar; an animated film came out in 1999.
ABC thinks there is value in telling the story again. Lyne says that in many of the nation’s schools, where the diary was once required reading, the book has come off curriculum lists. “As a result, there are an enormous number of people under 30 who really don’t know Anne Frank.”
Furthermore, she says, “the value of what Steven Spielberg has done with Shoah and ‘Schindler’s List’ is to remind people . . . we live in a world where things like this are still happening. If we don’t tell stories that teach a new generation, then we are going to have a problematic world, and it’s a wonderful thing that the Anne Frank story be told and retold.”
The movie is trying to do two disparate things. Ellis--a former reporter who has been extraordinarily successful for ABC with two very un-Anne Frank-like topics, the Beach Boys and Judy Garland--describes the opening scene, an overhead shot of a group of some 60 children on a playground, before eventually focusing in on Anne. It’s designed, he says, to give a sense that “we could have picked anyone of these kids; so you understand what was lost.” By not having to stick to the diary, he says, he was able to give life and depth and nuance to the other characters in Anne’s life, including Edith and the dentist, Fritz Pfeffer, who have long been known largely only through Anne’s highly selective eyes.
At the same time, Lyne describes a project that will draw its focus from the young girl. “Even the most powerful films about the Holocaust haven’t followed a character that you are as engaged with” as in the ABC movie, she says. “You’ve followed this girl from just before her 10th birthday; her spirit, her conversation, her mind are enormously engaging. And then you watch as she becomes almost a feral creature before her death.”
It’s a delicate balance, made all the more difficult by the long-standing battles over Anne, who, to the dismay of some, has come to stand for the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, obscuring their individuality. Some cultural critics have also decried the way Frank’s story, when limited to the diary, has sanitized the issue, sparing viewers and readers from the grim reality of the young author’s death.
ABC’s film, like the book on which it is based, falls firmly in with those who would demystify the icon. “We’re trying to get beyond the picture on the book cover to the girl who lived that life,” Ellis says. “That may upset some people who are closely involved with the official version of the story, but ... no one can legitimately say that they own Anne Frank. It was a short but fascinating life that deserves to be told in its fullest possible version.”
As for the issue of the cleaning woman as the betrayer, Ellis says he is partly relying on extensive research of his own, but notes, “It’s less important for us who made the call than why the call was made,” which was out of fear.
ABC won’t dramatize Anne’s death because there are no details. “We’re trying to be as truthful and factual as we can without knowing how she died,” said David Kappes, the movie’s producer.
By staying true to the story, ABC may ultimately be taking its biggest risk. The movie will contain some scenes that are bound to shock viewers, as the characters of Anne, Margot, Edith and Mrs. Van Pels get their hair shorn and are stripped naked.
Blethyn’s contract had originally stated that she wouldn’t shave her head, but when she arrived in Prague and saw the dedication of the other actors, she changed her mind. “It’ll grow,” she says repeatedly during an interview a few days before the scene will be shot, clearly still grappling with the consequences of what she has agreed to do. “I just didn’t want to be compromised.”
There were no internal ABC objections to the nude scene, says Lyne, “which is extraordinary.” Although some viewers may be put off by the starkness with which their icon is treated, Lyne says that it was key to the story. “It is only there where it was absolutely necessary and Hannah [Anne] herself is protected, but this is what happened to them,” says Lyne.
“What’s provocative about it is not the nudity, it’s the dehumanization of these characters,” says Lyne. “I do expect that some people will find it too tough to watch. I don’t think people are going to say, why are you doing this?”
On the day the production begins shooting concentration-camp scenes, Gordon, already wearing the makeup that for the first time is designed to make her look haggard and wan, comes bouncing up through the snow to say good morning to producer Proppe. All the actors look so ghastly today in their makeup, she tells him, and everyone is depressed. “So I’m just walking up to them and saying, ‘Darling, you look be-a-u-ti-fuuulll,’ ” she says with a grin.
By 8 p.m., the mood has changed dramatically. It’s dark outside, but on the eerie set, at a small rail yard in the town of Dubi, a half-hour outside Prague, the xenon searchlight casts a harsh brightness reflected by the blanket of snow. Even when the cameras aren’t rolling, five German shepherds continue to bark incessantly and lunge, this time at their Nazi-uniformed keepers; the old train engine lets out an occasional blast of steam. When the cameras do roll, and 400 shivering extras pour out of the period cattle cars in a re-creation of the Frank family’s arrival in Auschwitz, a couple of the smallest children slip and fall on the ice, howling for their nearby parents. Blethyn rescues one frightened child, meaning the scene will have to be shot again. Even the hot chocolate being served just off camera, the heaters and the woman in a 1940s tweed coat talking on a cell phone aren’t enough to dispel the unease and gloom.
And Gordon is crying, after Dornhelm yelled at his actors. “He was really mean,” she says later. “I was scared, I didn’t know what to do. I kept thinking, ‘Please, someone help me.”’
“For 15 years I refused to have anything to do with Holocaust movies,” says Dornhelm, between takes, because he dreaded having to immerse himself in the horror of the era and having to do things such as yell at actors to get them in the right mood. “It’s perverse,” he says.
Later that night, several cast members, emotionally drained but unable to sleep, will end up back at Dornhelm’s rented apartment for a 3 a.m. snack of vegetable soup and caviar.
These are scenes that Dornhelm would jettison altogether if he could do so without losing the story line, fearful that images of cattle cars and snarling dogs and gaunt prisoners are becoming cliche. The sheer number of Holocaust-related projects on screens threatens to dilute the power of those images to shock and horrify. This year alone, CBS aired the four-hour “Haven,” about a woman who saved 1,000 Jews, PBS just aired “Schindler’s List” twice, and HBO’s “Conspiracy” airs in May. Movies have an easier time telling Holocaust-related stories than television, says Proppe. In trying to make a show palatable to a mass audience and mainstream sponsors, “the danger is you end up trivializing the event. You have to be very careful to not let the format of television undermine what you’re trying to do,” he says. “You can often make a more effective film outside the system.”
In an effort to avoid that trap, ABC hired director Dornhelm; although he had previously directed a CBS movie about Marina Oswald, he is mostly known for his documentary films, including “Requiem for Dominic,” a quasi-documentary about the revolution in his native Romania, which Proppe says is “a little too edgy” for prime-time television.
One way the team has tried to avoid cliches is by stripping away as much sentimentality as possible. Scriptwriter Ellis says that while the temptation in TV movies is to “manufacture scenes for poignancy,” he was working with a key advantage: “The most affecting scene did happen,” as Anne was reunited in Bergen-Belsen, albeit through a straw fence, with her childhood friend Hannah Goslar.
“It’s easy to make people cry,” says Kingsley, who tries to strip something out of his performance with each successive take. “It’s a lot harder to make them think.”
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* “Anne Frank” airs at 9 p.m .May 20-21 on ABC. The network has rated Part 1 TV-PG-V (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for violent content); Part 2 has been rated TV-14-V (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for violent content).