Diane Keaton: 10 Essential Movies

When most people mention this towering 1970s touchstone — the perfect melding of old Hollywood scope and New Hollywood grit — they talk of Brando, Pacino, Coppola, the endless quotes that remain part of pop lexicon (“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”). Diane Keaton isn’t usually the first person people mention, but make no mistake: she’s an absolutely essential part of this American masterpiece. Her character, Kay Corleone, isn’t just the audience surrogate, observing the culture and customs of this Italian-American clan from the perspective of an outsider and thus letting us in to that world as well. She’s the moral center of the film, the one who calls Michael Corleone out for bartering his soul and making it all about business instead of being personal. Even Kate’s insistence that “senators and Presidents don’t have men killed” (who’s being naive now, Kate?) suggests a rosy view of the world that counteracts the violent reality of her boyfriend’s Mob mentality. Her reading of that line says it all. And when that door is closed on Kay in the film’s final shot, Keaton makes sure you see the loss on Kay’s face. She’d reprise the character to great effect in The Godfather: Part II — her “this must all end” scene remains absolutely devastating — and return for Part III decades later. But her breakthrough movie role established Keaton as someone we’d follow anywhere. Watching her was an offer we could never refuse. —David Fear

Keaton had been cast opposite Woody Allen in the original 1969 theatrical production of Play It Again, Sam, which would be the beginning of a long romantic relationship and an even longer, indelible professional collaboration. Her work playing against the actor-director in the 1972 film version of that Bogart-worshipping comedy, as well as Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), helped establish her as a first-rate comedian and the perfect foil for Allen’s perpetually fumbling nebbish — but it’s his 1977 tribute to Keaton that made her a bona fide movie star. From the moment she utters Annie’s signature “La di da” — a term Keaton took from her own real-life repertoire of phrases — we are as enamored of this kooky, lovely, neurotic New Yorker as Alvy Singer is. The outfits alone were enough to make the title character an icon and spur a fashion trend of baggy suits and floppy hats, yet it’s the way in which Keaton turns an intellectual ditz (or maybe she’s a ditzy intellectual?) into a three-dimensional, full fleshed-out modern woman. It garnered her an Oscar, and Keaton would work on and off with Allen for the next few decades. But this remains the highlight of both their work together and Keaton’s Seventies “It girl” era. La di da indeed. —DF

“I’d rather be seduced than comforted,” Keaton’s schoolteacher Theresa Dunn tells someone early on in Richard Brooks’ adaptation of Judith Rossner’s bestseller — and her character will spend the rest of the film searching for Mr. Right (or Mr. He’ll-Do-for-Tonight) in search of both seduction and comfort. Seen now, this take on the then-burgeoning trend of singles bars feels dated in every way but Keaton’s extraordinary performance — she somehow manages to make Dunn feel like both a symbolic stand-in for every woman trying to navigate choppy social waters and the sort of everywoman you’d see on the subway. Seriously, name another actor circa 1977 who could hold their own against a manic Richard Gere in a jockstrap, flailing his arms around while holding what appears to be a day-glo knife! Keaton makes you feel this woman’s loneliness and hopefulness without making her seem pitiful or desperate; the play of emotions that runs across her face during that Gere sequence, or when she realizes that the final date she takes home is less stable than she’d realized, gives you everything without saying a word. —DF

Sold as an epic historical romantic drama, this portrait of early-20th-century Communist activist John Reed had the sweep of Gone With the Wind or Doctor Zhivago. But neither Vivien Leigh nor Julie Christie had a role as substantial as the one Diane Keaton was gifted by director Warren Beatty — that of feminist author Louise Bryant, who falls for Reed but never loses her fiery independence in the process. After a decade earning acclaim in the Godfather pictures and as a frequent muse for Woody Allen, Keaton found another gear here, displaying a cutting intellect that was far removed from the softer, sweeter characters of her earlier career. But Bryant’s defiance is nicely complemented by the character’s vulnerabilities, giving Keaton a chance to do a love story across a grand canvas that nonetheless feels intimate in the way her best performances always did. And who can forget Reds’ closing stretches, in which Bryant goes to that crowded train station in the hopes that her true love Reed might appear — her anticipation turning to panic turning to despair, and then at last to tearful gratitude. —Tim Grierson

For many, Keaton epitomized the independent woman of the 1970s. In Alan Parker’s bruising domestic drama, she’d put a face to the growing number of divorcees in the early 1980s. As one half of the couple that disintegrates before your eyes, Keaton’s Faith Dunlap is forced to deal with her unfaithful husband George (played by Albert Finney) and tries to find love amongst the ruins of her situation with a contractor (Peter Weller) building their tennis court. You would not call their parting amicable. Everyone remembers the sheer viciousness of the fights in this film — trust us, they are brutal — and the bitterness quotient is off the charts. But it’s Keaton’s quiet moments in the film that gut you when you rewatch it now, from the shellshocked look on her face as the Dunlaps drive home after a formal event, to Faith smoking a joint in the bath and softly singing the Beatles’ “If I Fell.” It’s somehow the most beautiful and devastating moment in a movie filled with sound and fury, and it’s all Keaton’s doing. —DF

It’s the holy trinity of 1980s heavy-hitting actresses (had Meryl Streep been involved, this would be like The Avengers for the era’s strong, name-above-the-title screen women). And you could not ask for a finer trio than Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange and Diane Keaton to tackle Beth Henley’s Pulitzer-winning play about three Southern sisters dealing with the aftermath of a crime — specifically, one that doesn’t just involve the heart but the body of one of their husbands. Returning to their family home in Mississippi, the Magrath ladies each have their own way of dealing with the situation at hand; for Keaton’s wallflower-ish Lenny Magrath, that means fretting that the family will be torn apart by scandal and mourning a youth that’s passed her by. It’s very much an ensemble piece, and the joy of the film is watching these three stars play off each other. But that doesn’t mean that Keaton doesn’t have her stand-out moments, or can take a simple scene involving the eating of her chocolates and turn it into an aria of rage and built-up resentment. —DF

The Eighties had its share of comedies about women in the corporate workplace, from 9 to 5 to Working Girl. In the middle of those classics is Baby Boom, the first collaboration between Keaton and Nancy Meyers. She stars as J.C. Wiatt, a career-obsessed yuppie who inherits the baby of a cousin she has not seen since 1954. She eventually abandons New York — and her banker boyfriend, played by Harold Ramis — and moves to rural Vermont, where she goes full MAHA and invents natural baby food. It had only been a decade since Annie Hall, but Keaton had spent recent years starring in dramas; it’s almost like she was storing all this anxious, comedic energy, waiting to unleash it. Not a single second of this 110-minute film is wasted as she has one hysterical meltdown after another, like when her literal well has run dry and she vents to the repair man — so deeply that she falls backwards into the snow. Revisiting the film years later, she was surprised by her own performance. “I watched,” she said, “And I thought, ‘My God, I don’t know how I did that.’” —Angie Martoccio