There are few who would argue that Diane Keaton, who turns 70 today, 5 January, 2016, is one of the defining American actresses of her generation. Keaton’s career path, which has taken her from working with the likes of Coppola and Woody Allen, to an array of classic mainstream comedies in the 1990s, has ensured that she holds a warm place in the hearts of several generations of film-goers. But where did it all begin?
Well, while Keaton had appeared in films prior to the release of The Godfather (1972), it would be fair to say that Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece was the film for which she first became recognised. Playing the part of Kay Adams, girlfriend to returned WWII veteran, Michael Corleone, Keaton used her limited screen time to present audiences with the film’s only voice of conscience as Corleone is dragged into the criminal underworld he has always despised. In Keaton’s hands, Kay became a complex character torn between ethics, love and pure denial. But when she returned to the series in The Godfather Part II (1974), Keaton went even further, presenting a convincing image of a woman desperate to leave the husband she despised, whilst also remaining acutely aware that his warped moral code would not allow him to let her go. Her solution makes for one of the series most emotionally powerful moments.
But, more than for the Godfather films, Diane Keaton is recognised for her long-running collaboration with her former partner, Woody Allen. Keaton met Allen while auditioning for his stage play, Play It Again, Sam, in 1969 and a relationship soon commenced. This relationship eventually ended, but the two remained friends and Keaton co-starred alongside Allen in the 1972 film version of the same play. While the film was primarily led by Allen, a neurotic publisher dependent on romantic advice from an apparition of Humphrey Bogart, Keaton was striking as the equally neurotic, cerebral and altogether quirky woman he ends up falling in love with. The chemistry between the two was undeniable, and Keaton went on play similar roles in Allen’s science fiction comedy Sleeper (1973), and his comedic account of Tsarist Russia, Love and Death (1975).
It was in 1977 that their collaboration reached its highest point with Annie Hall. For Woody Allen, this was a significant turning point in his career as a filmmaker. Moving away from the broad comedies he’d been directing up to this point, here was a far more dramatic work that delved into the realities of New York life (and life in general) in the late 1970s, viewed through the perspective of Allen’s eccentric persona. For Keaton, this represented a massive opportunity to grow. She played the title character, a neurotic, intelligent, occasionally childlike and frustratingly inaccessible woman whose naive charm is as appealing to the audience as it is to Allen’s character. The movie proved to be a critical and commercial hit, and Diane Keaton went on to win an Academy Award for her role. Allen and Keaton would go on to collaborate on the Bergman-esque drama Interiors in 1978 and the much-loved Manhattan in 1979. Although Keaton would cameo in Allen’s Radio Days in 1987, it was not until Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) that they would work together again – a solid film but fairly minor when juxtaposed with Annie Hall.
After the peaks Keaton attained with The Godfather and her Woody Allen collaborations, her career took some very different directions. Her turn in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1980) as the exceptionally liberal Louise Bryant brought an intellectual balance to what might otherwise have descended into an egocentric project for Beatty. She portrayed the real-life American journalist who positively critiqued the Bolshevik revolution whilst engaging in a non-monogamous on and off again relationship with the subject of the film, the journalist John Reed.
During the 1980s, Keaton’s career slowed, before an upsurge in popularity with a series of mainstream comedies like the Father of the Bride (1991) with Steve Martin, Look Who’s Talking Now (1993) and The First Wives Club (1996). And whilst her name might not grab quite as much attention in 2015 as it did in the 1970s, at 70 years of age Diane Keaton’s career is still going strong.
by James Curnow
A Film History Magazine 