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Plenty of accomplished performers have starred in rom-coms. Ordinarily, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as ever created. However, concurrently, she revisited the character of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate intense dramas with romantic comedies across the seventies, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for best actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and continued as pals throughout her life; in interviews, Keaton portrayed Annie as a perfect image of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance required little effort. Yet her breadth in her performances, contrasting her dramatic part and her Allen comedies and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – even if she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as the director’s evolution between more gag-based broad comedies and a authentic manner. As such, it has numerous jokes, imaginative scenes, and a loose collage of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a fated love affair. Likewise, Keaton, oversaw a change in American rom-coms, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain famous from the ’50s. Instead, she mixes and matches elements from each to create something entirely new that seems current today, interrupting her own boldness with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple initially bond after a game on the courts, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a words that embody her nervous whimsy. The film manifests that tone in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Afterward, she centers herself singing It Had to Be You in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

This is not evidence of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies preoccupied with mortality). At first, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t lead to either changing enough accommodate the other. Yet Annie does change, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a more suitable partner for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – anxious quirks, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Maybe Keaton was wary of that trend. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; her movie Baby Boom is really her only one from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, became a model for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s skill to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon despite her real roles being matrimonial parts (whether happily, as in that family comedy, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or the comedy Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even during her return with the director, they’re a established married pair united more deeply by funny detective work – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

But Keaton did have a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? One more Oscar recognition, and a entire category of romances where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her loss is so startling is that Diane continued creating those movies up until recently, a frequent big-screen star. Now fans are turning from assuming her availability to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine modern equivalents of such actresses who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her talent to commit herself to a genre that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s unusual for a single part to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her