A necessity for the Anais Nin fan
Anais Observed is an hour-long documentary by Robert Snyder, released in 1973. Most of the filming took place in her beautiful Los Angeles home, which was designed by Lloyd Wright (a relative of Frank Lloyd Wright). It's a stunning image: Ms. Nin sitting near her pool in her backyard, discussing her life, influences, and artistic aspirations. She was 70 at the time of filming, but could easily have passed for a woman in her 50s. Her voice is soothing and delicate, almost angelic with that exotic accent; the letter R is pronounced as W, e.g., Anais believes in the importance of living out one's "dweam." I now understand why so many fell in love with her: she is bewitching, almost otherworldly.

We then see Anais typing up her diaries, preparing the latest volume to be published. Consulting the original manuscripts (there is a brief scene of her in the bank vault in Brooklyn with the 100+ original diaries), Anais says that it was not nostalgia for the past that made her decide to publish her memoirs, but an awareness of the fact that the friends and associates she wrote about in the diaries during the 1930s-50s were, by the 1970s, at the forefront of the international artistic and cultural community. And so the depiction of these friends, associates, and mentors, comes to be the focus of the documentary: D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Antonin Artaud, Isamu Noguchi, Caresse Crosby, Martha Graham, Lawrence Durrell, Otto Rank, and many others are either interviewed or profiled; occasionally archival footage is used. Toward the end of the documentary we see how Anais is fulfilling the circuit, passing on inspiration to the younger generation: a group of students from UCLA gather in her livingroom to discuss literature. How I would have loved to have been among them ... but I would not be born for another three years.

Anais Observed is a wonderful documentary that any fan of Anais Nin will absolutely love. Though I must admit that the version of her life depicted here is entirely subordinate to the stylized persona of the diaries. In other words, this is not exactly a "critical" and rigorous investigation of her life. The "darker" aspects of her life are not discussed. In fact, the entire documentary attains an ethereal energy that could be described as approximating a "dream state," which is appropriate since one of Anais Nin's favorite sayings was Jung's directive that we must "proceed from the dream...." And since it is that stylized persona of the diaries that first attracted us, her fans, to Anais Nin, it is only fitting that this persona is presented in a documentary meant to highlight her unique career.

Andrew Michael Parodi