This is so incredible to watch. You can't help but hope that the footage will continue but it never does- no matter how many times its replayed. Thank you to The English Muse for sharing!
A newlywed couple leaves an Amsterdam apartment building. People hover on the sidewalk, watching them go. Then the camera pans upward -- and there, gazing down from a balcony, is Anne Frank.
The date is July 22, 1941. She's 12 years old. It's a year before she and her family will go into hiding, less than four years before she will die of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in the waning days of World War II. We watch her watching, watch her look back over her shoulder, quick and coltish, as if in response to someone inside.
"As familiar as we are with images of Anne Frank," Francine Prose writes in her provocative "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife," "as inured as we may think we are to the sight of her beautiful face, the film pierces whatever armor we imagine we have developed. . . . It's less like watching a film clip than like having one of those dreams in which you see a long-lost loved one or friend. In the dream, the person isn't really dead. You must have been mistaken. You wake up, and it takes a few moments to understand why the dream was so cruelly deceptive."
4 comments:
heartbreaking but sweet to see
thanks KT
XO,
Amy Z
It is astounding how powerful this short clip is. I am sure none of us reading this ever knew Anne Frank; but in this moment we are so connected to the brave young girl who lives in our hearts.
Incredibly haunting and too short a glimpse - like a quick Hello from the past and she is once again gone.
Fleur
xx
I didn't know such a film existed.Thanks for sharing.
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