Disappearance of Diane Keaton

Oscar for Annie Hall, heroine of The Godfather II, then icon of romantic comedies by Nancy Meyers, Diane Keaton played it all, without ever losing that rare blend of lightness and gravity which made her a unique presence. She has just passed away at the age of 79.

There is this scene of Godfather II that we can never forget. Kay faces Michael. A gray light, a cutting silence, and Diane Keaton, straight, contained, her eyes fixed on Al Pacino. No cry, no tears, no spectacular trembling: just this sentence, pronounced like a verdict: “ Oh Michael. Michael, you are blind. It was an abortion “. “ It was an abortion “. And then everything freezes. In this suspended moment, Keaton shifts The Godfather from mafia tragedy to intimate drama. We are no longer looking at the fall of an empire, but the disintegration of a couple. This is where she imposes her way: without effects, by letting the truth come.

Before becoming the icon of romantic comedies à la Nancy MeyersDiane Keaton was a bit of the thwarted conscience of the New Hollywood. Born in Los Angeles, trained on stage, she exploded in the 70s at the heart of a generation of directors who looked at her as an enigma: sunny and distant, funny and melancholic. In Coppola, she is the woman who understands too late; at Woody Allen, the one who understands too well.

Because just as much as Corleone’s wife, Diane Keaton remains the muse of the New York filmmaker. With Annie Hallshe won the Oscar for best actress in 1978 and redefined American comedy. Allen writes for her, but it is Keaton who invents the tone. This mixture of anxious humor, relaxed elegance and sentimental nonchalance is her. The hat, the tie, the nervous laughter: everything becomes style. And behind this style, lies emotion on edge. Annie Hall is not a muse after all, she is a modern, funny, cultured, elusive heroine.

But between The Godfather And Annie HallThere is Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). And it’s arguably the most underrated film of his career. She plays a New York schoolteacher who leads a double life: tidy woman by day, sexual explorer by night. A risky, frontal role, the antipodes of Allenian fantasy. Keaton’s accuracy and audacity are moving: she explores female solitude with a frankness that American cinema had never really dared. At the time, the film was shocking but today, it seems visionary and above all, it announced Keaton’s courage to not let himself be confined, to go where he is not expected.

The 80s confirmed his taste for the opposite. In Redsby Warren Beatty, she plays Louise Bryant, journalist and activist, a figure of rare political and romantic independence: second Oscar nomination. In The Wear of Time by Alan Parker, she confronts Albert Finney with raw intensity, without romanticism or filter. And in InteriorsWoody Allen offers him his first tragic, stripped-down, almost Bergmanian role.

The following years saw her alternate between lighter comedies (The Ex Club, Mysterious murder in Manhattan) and intimate dramas like Simple secrets (1996), which earned him his third Oscar nomination. Then, almost by surprise, she found a new lease of life on screen thanks to Nancy Meyers.

It is Meyers who understands what many had forgotten: that Diane Keaton could age in the cinema without ceasing to be desirable. Baby boomfirst, in 1987: a transition comedy, where the working girl discovers that she can let go of everything without betraying herself. Then The father of the brideand above all Anything can happen (2003), summit of the genre. Opposite Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves, Keaton plays a fifty-year-old novelist, brilliant, a little outdated, who laughs, cries, loves – sometimes all at the same time. The film rests entirely on her: on this unique way of making the inner disorder behind the beige linen comfort credible.

His laughter – the one we thought we knew – finds all its power here: nervous, sincere, communicative. It’s not an actress’ laugh, it’s a vital reflex. Meyers gives him perfect settings; Keaton brings chaos into it. She makes these comedies human and tender.

In the fall of her career, Diane Keaton left the big screen to enter the television world with The Young Popeplaying Sister Mary – educator and then confidante of an atypical pope. For Paolo Sorrentino she takes on this discreet but charged role, extending her trajectory: still capable of slipping into the shadows to implant a truth, a speaking silence – not an apparition, but a moral presence.

Deep down, Keaton was not the woman some people dreamed of being: she was the one we could understand. Never pretentious, never distant, she gave the impression of improvising her life like her dialogues – searching for the right tone, even if it meant stumbling.

Diane Keaton was also a face: this almost ancient calm, this gentleness which could, with a laugh or a tear, turn the screen upside down. As an English critic recalled this morning, “more than America’s little bride, she was the woman America loved without ever being able to conquer her.”

She remained a rare presence: free, singular and inimitable. She leaves behind her a cinema of doubt and grace, where each hesitation, each smirk, counted more than any tirade.

Just review this plan of Godfather IIher gaze closing behind the door, to understand: Diane Keaton never needed to do too much. She played in tune and gently powerful.