The diary has served as an important cinematic frame narrative for several major movies over the years, from The Notebook to Bridget Jones’s Diary to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It’s no secret as to why this is: the diary is an extremely relatable concept for most moviegoers, and having a character’s private thoughts and feelings visually depicted on-screen can make for an incredibly compelling movie. Even more compelling? The words “based on a true story.”
With that in mind, a number of movies based on real-life diaries have been produced by major studios over the years. Typically, they are centered around a particularly pivotal historical time period, and while these films often take artistic liberties with their source material, they also typically succeed in shedding light on important figures and events that may have otherwise become forgotten. Here are 10 movies based on a real person’s diary.
10 The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Loosely based on The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, The Scarlet Empress stars Marlene Dietrich as Princess Sophia Frederica, the German noble who eventually enjoyed a 30-year reign as the empress of Russia during the Age of Enlightenment. Directed by two-time Academy Award nominee Josef von Sternberg, The Scarlet Empress did take some liberties with Catherine the Great’s diary (novelist and playwright Manuel Komroff arranged them to craft the film’s screenplay), though it was praised by critics for its lighting and art design.
Important Russian History
Published in 1859 by Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen during his exile in London, The Memoirs of Catherine the Great follows the Russian ruler’s time in the public eye, from her arrival in the Russian court at the age of 14 to her unhappy marriage to Peter III (who she eventually overthrew as emperor in 1762) to her long reign on the throne of Russia.
The diary was published in several languages (Catherine herself was fluent in French, Russian, and German), and is also considered to be an important work in 18th-century Russian history, as Catherine was an accomplished writer who also published pieces on political theory, journalism, and operas.
Rent on FlexFling
9 Sergeant York (1941)
Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper in the titular role, tells the remarkable true story of Alvin C. York, the Tennessee farmer and initial pacifist who went on to become one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I. Directed by Howard Hughes, Sergeant York was commercially and critically acclaimed, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1941 and earning two Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Cooper. Based on Sergeant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary, the 1941 film is widely considered to be one of the best war movies of all time.
A Tale of Heroics and Struggles
York’s diary, which was edited by Tom Skeyhill and published in 1928, predominantly focuses on his battlefield heroics and his initial struggles to come to terms with fighting in a war due to his religious beliefs (York initially sought exemption from WWI as a conscientious objector, though this request was denied). One of the more compelling stories from York’s diary recounts his single-handed dispatch of 25 German soldiers during a battle that saw him and his 17-man platoon pinned down by heavy machine gun fire, a feat that earned him the Medal of Honor.
Stream on Tubi
8 Two Years Before the Mast (1946)
Two Years Before the Mast is a historical adventure film starring Alan Ladd as Charles Stewart, the spoiled son of a wealthy shipping magnate who is unwillingly coerced into working aboard one of his father’s own ships. Based on the memoir of the same name by Richard Henry Dana Jr., one of Stewart’s crewmates on the ship who is played by Academy Award nominee Brian Donlevy in the film, Two Years Before the Mast was directed by John Farrow (the father of actress Mia Farrow) and also starred William Bendix, Howard da Silva, and Esther Fernández.
Influenced by Moby Dick’s Herman Melville
Published in 1840, Two Years Before the Mast is Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s first-hand account of a voyage from Boston to California on a merchant ship from 1834 to 1836. Dana’s diary, which strongly influenced Herman Melville (he wrote Moby Dick nearly 10 years later), provides a detailed description of a sailor’s difficult life at sea.
According to essayist Wright Morris, the book was “conceived as a protest and written to improve the lot of the common sailor,” and while the movie does take several artistic liberties (Charles Stewart is not specifically mentioned in the diary), the harsh treatment of the sailors and the villainous Captain Thompson (played by Howard Da Silva in the movie) were predominantly featured in both.
7 The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
The first — and best — big-screen adaptation of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl was the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank. Directed by two-time Academy Award winner George Stevens and starring Millie Perkins as Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic with her family and documented her everyday life in a posthumously published diary, the movie won three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography – Black-and-White, Best Art Direction – Black-and-White, and Best Supporting Actress for Shelley Winters (who later donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank Museum).
A Heartbreaking Story
In The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank describes her life from 1942 to 1944, before her family’s eventual arrest by the Gestapo and her subsequent death in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 15. Otto Frank, Anne’s father and the only surviving member of the Frank family, published his daughter’s diary in 1947, which has since become one of the best-known books in the world and has been translated into over 70 languages.
The Diary of a Young Girl inspired the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1955 play The Diary of Anne Frank, with three of the play’s actors reprising their roles for the film (Joseph Schildkraut as Otto Frank, Gusti Huber as Anne’s mother Edith Frank, and Lou Jacobi as Hans van Daan, the patriarch of the family that shared the Frank’s hiding spot).
Rent on Apple TV
6 The Story of Adèle H. (1975)
The Story of Adèle H. tells the story of Adèle Hugo, the youngest child of renowned French writer Victor Hugo, and her romantic obsession with a British military officer named Albert Pinson. Based on Adele Hugo’s diaries and directed by François Truffaut, the iconic director who was one of the founders of the French New Wave, the film starred Isabelle Adjani as Hugo and Bruce Robinson as Pinson. While The Story of Adèle H. did not fare well at the box office, it was a critical success, and earned Adjani an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role, making her the youngest Best Actress nominee at the time.
A Diary of Infatuation
After Victor Hugo and his family were forced into exile in the mid-19th century due to his outspoken opposition to Napoleon III, Adele Hugo kept a diary during their time in Jersey and Guernsey, which she titled Journal de l’Exil (Diary of the Exile). In her diary, Hugo primarily focused on her infatuation with Lieutenant Albert Pinson, a man who had once proposed marriage to Hugo.
After having a change of heart, Hugo decided to romantically pursue Pinson, and despite his constant rejections, she followed him to several military posts. Sadly, Hugo’s obsession with Pinson was a symptom of her mental illness, which included a paranoid, infatuation-based condition called erotomania, hallucinations, and schizophrenia.
Stream on Prime Video
5 The Iron Triangle (1989)
The Iron Triangle is a Vietnam War movie that focuses on the unlikely bond between a captain in the U.S. Army infantry (Beau Bridges) and a 17-year-old Viet Cong soldier (Liem Whatly). Filmed in Sri Lanka, the film was directed by Eric Weston, and also starred Cambodian actors François Chau and Haing S. Ngor, as well as pop star Johnny Hallyday as a French mercenary.
Multiple Points of View of the Vietnam War
Based on the diary of an unknown Viet Cong soldier, The Iron Triangle attempted to do what Vietnam War films up until that point hadn’t really done, and represent the points of view of both the American and Viet Cong sides. Despite its nuanced approach, the film wasn’t nearly as successful as other Vietnam movies released around the same time, including Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July.
The Iron Triangle also received mixed critical reviews, with the choice to use Beau Bridges’ narrative voice being a particular point of contention. As Robert Ebert wrote in his two-star review of the film, “it’s an interesting decision to use the Viet Cong diary as a starting point for the film, but it might have been more interesting to go all the way and tell the movie from a Viet Cong point of view.”
Stream on Prime Video
4 Henry & June (1990)
Directed by Philip Kaufman with a screenplay co-written by him and his late wife Rose, Henry & June tells the story of French writer Anaïs Nin’s affair with American novelist Henry Miller and his wife, June. Based on Nin’s published memoir of the same name, the film starred Maria de Medeiros as Nin, Fred Ward as Henry Miller, and Uma Thurman as June Miller. Nominated for Best Cinematography at the 63rd Academy Awards, Henry & June was the first film to be given an NC-17 rating by the MPAA.
An Unhappy Marriage
Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin contains material excerpted from Nin’s first volume of diaries written between October 1931 and October 1932. Published in 1986, the diary focuses on Nin’s unhappy marriage with her husband, Hugh Parker Guiler (a banker and filmmaker played by Richard E. Grant in the movie), and her subsequent romantic relationships with both Henry and June Miller. Aside from Kaufman’s production, the memoir spawned La stanza delle parole (The Room of Words), a low-budget Italian film that also premiered in 1990.
3 Andersonville (1996)
Andersonville is an American Civil War film that centers around the notorious Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, where Union soldiers were severely mistreated. The made-for-TV film aired on TNT in 1996, and featured an ensemble cast that included Jarrod Emick, Frederic Forrest, Jan Tříska, and William H. Macy. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker John Frankenheimer, Andersonville received seven Primetime Emmy nominations, winning one for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie and earning Frankenheimer his fourth award in the category.
A Prisoner’s Diary
John Ransom, a brigade quartermaster of the Ninth Michigan Volunteer Cavalry, was only 20 years old when he served as a prisoner at Andersonville Prison (also known as Camp Sumter), which housed around 45,000 Union prisoners throughout the duration of the Civil War, 13,000 of whom died of disease and malnutrition due to the prison’s terrible conditions. Ransom’s diary was a first-hand account of life in Andersonville (captured in 1863; he eventually escaped from the Confederates in 1864), and it served as the inspiration for the ’96 movie.
Several aspects of Andersonville‘s plot, including many of the main characters, differ heavily from Ransom’s diary, though the film does capture Andersonville’s inhumane conditions and the cruelty of Captain Henry Wirz (played by Tříska in the movie), who was eventually tried and executed for war crimes.
Buy on Apple TV
2 The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
The Motorcycle Diaries tells the coming-of-age story of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a young medical student who became one of the most famous revolutionaries of the 20th century. Starring Gael García Bernal (who also played a young Che Guevara in the 2002 mini-series Fidel), the film follows Guevara’s journey through South America with his biochemist friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna). Directed by Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, the movie won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Al Otro Lado Del Río) and also received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, making José Rivera the first Puerto Rican screenwriter to be nominated for an Academy Award.
A South American Adventure
In January 1952, 23-year-old Ernesto “Che” Guevara and 29-year-old Alberto Granado began their travels through South America on the back of a 1939 Norton 500cc motorcycle. Covering more than 5,000 miles in nine months, the duo’s adventures took them everywhere, from the Andes Mountains to the Amazon River Basin.
During the journey, Guevara was particularly struck by the political and economic injustices faced by members of the poor and lower class, which not only inspired him to write about his experiences in a diary, but also spurred his Marxist radicalization and led to his involvement in the Cuban Revolution. Published nearly 30 years after Guevara’s death in 1967, The Motorcycle Diaries has been a New York Times bestseller several times.
Rent on Apple TV
1 Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)
Hyde Park on Hudson focuses on the intimate relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and Margaret Suckley, FDR’s childhood friend and sixth cousin. Starring Bill Murray as Roosevelt and Laura Linney as Suckley, the film centers around King George VI (Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth’s (Olivia Colman) visit to Roosevelt’s country estate in 1939. Directed by Roger Michell, Hyde Park on Hudson is a heavily-dramatized adaptation of Suckley’s diaries and journals.
A Presidential Friendship
In life, Margaret Suckley was known as an archivist for the first American presidential library who maintained a close friendship with President Roosevelt. But, following Suckley’s death in 1991 at the age of 99, the discovery of her diaries as well as confidential letters from FDR shed new light on the nature of her and the president’s relationship. These diaries and letters (some of which FDR apparently instructed Suckley to burn) inspired Richard Nelson to pen the 2009 play Hyde Park on Hudson.
Nearly three years later, the film of the same name was released (Nelson also adapted the screenplay), though several biographers and historians claim several inaccuracies, particularly regarding the sexual nature of the famous friendship.
Rent on Apple TV
