Nora Ephron, who died Tuesday at age 71, left an indelible mark on the life of her time in a way that's rare for a filmmaker. Anyone doubting that need only take note that for over 20 years there was such a thing in the public mind as "a Nora Ephron film" and that everyone who cared about movies knew exactly what that meant.

Those words - "a Nora Ephron film" - promised a movie containing some specific elements: At least one strong woman's role, maybe more. Barbed humor. Bone-deep romanticism. And just a hint, sometimes more than a hint, of nostalgia.

In a profession in which writers are often ignored and directors get all the credit, Ephron's work was so characteristic and so easily identifiable that people often think of the movies she wrote as her movies and forget the director. Mike Nichols directed "Heartburn," but for all the world that remains a Nora Ephron film. "When Harry Met Sally" was directed by Rob Reiner, but I had to double-check just to make sure.

Already in her 40s by the time she wrote her first feature film, "Silkwood" (1983), Ephron wrote about adults for adults. At her most characteristic, her films were inhabited by urban sophisticates, well heeled and well educated, armed with a caustic wit and a wise attitude that could only partially hide their yearning inner life. On the outside, there was self-protective sarcasm; on the inside, a pile of mush.

In retrospect, it's a lovely and appropriate thing that, in her last film, she so ably directed Meryl Streep as Julia Child in "Julie & Julia." Child had the courage and the freedom to be what many of Ephron's arch and sophisticated characters really wanted to be - loving and spontaneous and embracing of other people.

In the end, that loving embrace was mainly what Ephron's work was about. The archness and the wisecracks were just grounding devices, a way to be positive without illusions, and hopeful without being laughed at. But the vision was essentially a romantic one, whether depicting the young adult love in "When Harry Met Sally," or the middle-aged tenderness between Julia Child and her husband in "Julie & Julia" or even the painful failure of love in "Heartburn."

It also must be said, and fairly quickly, that Ephron was not limited to making the "Nora Ephron film," that her scope was considerably wider than her most characteristic work would suggest. "Silkwood" was a political drama. "Mixed Nuts" (1994), which she wrote and directed, was a modern updating of the Marx Brothers, a seemingly thankless and misguided effort that turned out surprisingly well. She had an inventive comic sensibility - she really knew comedy - knew how to structure a laugh and guide a comic performance.

In the seriously underrated "Bewitched," she updated the old sitcom, not by recasting Darrin and Samantha but by turning the film into a story of people remaking the old sitcom - and accidentally casting a real witch in the lead role. Ephron's attention to and direction of even the most minor roles was a masterful demonstration of comic craftsmanship, and Nicole Kidman, as the witch, was as funny as she has ever been.

But in the end, Ephron will most likely be remembered for her "Nora Ephron films," and perhaps that's as it should be. The fake-orgasm-in-the-diner scene from "When Harry Met Sally," as performed by Meg Ryan, was a conversation piece from the day it was released, and it has since morphed into an undying classic, because it's funny, of course, but also because it's not just funny. Information is being communicated there, from a woman (Ryan) to a man (Billy Crystal) and from a woman (Ephron) to all men. Men laugh at that scene, but women always laugh harder.

And "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993), which was charming in its own time, has only improved with age, taking on a patina of extra wistfulness as a kind of fairy tale from the end of the 20th century.

Ephron imprinted between the pages of her books and onto the frames of her films how the people of her time dreamed about love and what they, in fact, got from love. It was a mix of old songs and scenes from movies, orgasms faked and believed, beautiful dreams and sleepless nights. It was in that zone of longing, between the dreaming and the getting that Ephron's work most lives - and where audiences will find a kindred spirit for as long as there are movies.
