She attracted attention as a gangster’s wife and had her breakthrough as a chic in Manhattan. Diane Keaton was later considered the funniest actress in the world. But she deserved her second Oscar for a dramatic role.
An adjective that you read in many newspaper articles about the actress Diane Keaton is: “self-deprecating.” That means: self-deprecating, modest, self-deprecating. Nowhere could this quality be better observed than in the film “Annie Hall” from 1977. At the side of Woody Allen (which is probably why the German film title is “The Urban Neurotic”) she strolled through Manhattan in men’s clothes, wore strange hats and sent word garlands of enchanting illogic sailing through the air.
Diane Keaton as Annie Hall: This was a chic – a non-Jew – from the middle of America who is actually out of place in a Jewish East Coast milieu, but still wants to fit in in New York and suffers a terribly funny, very slow nervous breakdown because of this dilemma. Diane Keaton later confirmed that she was delivering a self-portrait that had been exaggerated to the point of grotesqueness. Her acting performance not only won her an Oscar, but also earned her a cover photo in “Time” magazine: the magazine declared that she was “the funniest film actress in the world.”
She didn’t even start out as a comedian. She made her film debut in “The Godfather”, where she played Kay Adams, Michael Corleone’s girlfriend, who is clearly not from Sicily and becomes a gangster’s bride against her will. (She had a liaison with Al Pacino, who plays the gangster.) In the second part of “The Godfather,” her role was expanded. Keaton later made quite disparaging comments about her acting performance at the time and didn’t want to see the finished films because she felt she was wrongly cast. But she wasn’t miscast, she just played a woman in a world where women counted for nothing.
She achieved her first successes in Woody Allen’s early comedies: “The Last Night of Boris Grushenko” and “The Sleeper”. She was exactly the opponent the Jewish neurotic needed, and she knew it. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if Diane Keaton hadn’t been pushed out by Mia Farrow, but had stayed by Allen’s side.
After her breakthrough in “Annie Hall” she proved that she could also be something other than funny with “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”. In this crime film, Diane Keaton plays a teacher for the deaf from a strict Catholic family who picks up men in a bar and ends up in a deadly trap. An incredibly intense role – of course Keaton would have deserved an Oscar for that too! But apparently the people in Hollywood were too disturbed by her outstanding performance.
She was born in California in 1946; the mother is a housewife, the father is a civil engineer. As a young adult, Diane Keaton came to New York to become an actress. She appeared on Broadway in the musical “Hair,” then she auditioned for a role in Woody Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam” – not a film at the time, but a Broadway play. She almost wasn’t accepted because she was five centimeters taller than the short lead actor, but then she got the role anyway.
Her recognition value has been high since “Annie Hall” at the latest: Keaton also liked to wear men’s jackets and trousers in his private life, was tall and thin and liked to put hats on his head – preferably felt hats with wide brims. For her generation she had about the same importance as Katharine Hepburn for the generation before: Diane Keaton was an intelligent comedienne who could also be very serious and never had to make too much of herself because she could do a lot.
When she was already well into her 50s, she surprised audiences when she starred alongside – of all people – Jack Nicholson in a romantic comedy: “Something’s Gotta Give.” In German, the 2003 film unfortunately has the somewhat soulful title “What the Heart Desires”. Diane Keaton plays an aging playwright who falls for an old macho guy who only really likes young women.
With her love she manages to transform the guy into a human being. Impossible not to be moved by it. Impossible not to laugh out loud. The incomparable Diane Keaton died on Saturday at the age of 79.
