w i t h   y o u r   e y e s   w i d e   o p e n

Diane Keaton is 53 years old and was born on January 5th, 1946. She appears in thirty-seven movies, six of which only appeared on television. As a young adult, she did twelve movies. Her first one was in 1970, when she was twenty-four years old. These movies span until her mid-thirties. As a middle aged adult, Diane Keaton’s first movie was in 1981, when she was thirty-five. Since then, she has acted in nineteen big-screen movies. This year, she appeared as Georgia in the movie Hanging Up, which she also directed. She will be in the upcoming movie Town and Country.

I saw five movies where Diane Keaton was a young adult. In most of these, she dressed like a man. Critics say that she had “twitchy mannerisms and awkward speech patterns”. A lot of people found this annoying, but I found these behaviours to be the most interesting part of her early works. ¹ Typically, she portrayed an insecure, neurotic, or flaky character. In most of these movies, however, her character had all of these qualities. She didn’t have much of a range, and there was no real depth of character. These movies were poor quality. Love and Death was rather interesting, but the others were dumb. The fact that she was young may not be the reason why these movies weren’t good. All five of them were written, directed, and produced by Woody Allan. She did quite a number of films with him, because of their brief romantic involvement and continuous friendship. The reason why these movies were so bad may have just been because of Woody Allan. It may have nothing to do with Diane Keaton’s acting ability at the time.

I watched ten movies from Diane Keaton’s midlife works. A common thread between her characters was confidence and intelligence, something that was lacking in her previous roles. In most of these movies, her character loses control and has a screaming fit. Diane Keaton is a master of “spazzing out”. Her early works don’t include these fits.

She had a far greater range during her midlife. She continued to do comedies as before, but she also did some dramas. She took on roles as devoted mothers, working women, and loyal friends. She was even the voice of a poodle in Look Who’s Talking Now. Her characters in two recent movies were mothers of lesbians, and it was interesting how each character handled the fact. Annie, who is a fairly insecure individual in The First Wives Club, is supportive of her daughter. With a smile, she announces her daughter’s homosexuality to her friends and says that lesbians “are wonderful, nowadays”. Annie even goes into a gay bar at one point to see her daughter. On the other hand, controlling, demanding, and confident Elizabeth in The Other Sister refuses to accept her daughter Heather’s life choice. Whenever Heather mentions her partner Michele, Elizabeth becomes cold and changes the subject. Diane Keaton’s character refers to Michele as “Heather’s special friend”.

Her later movies were much better quality, and I enjoyed them all. Again, this could be due to her maturity as an actress or because she got away from Woody Allan.

¹ Mr. Showbiz Celebrity Biography: Diane Keaton, (http://mrshowbiz.go.com/people/dianekeaton/content/Bio.html)