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Many accomplished actresses have performed in romantic comedies. Typically, when aiming to win an Oscar, they have to reach for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and made it look disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever created. Yet in the same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate intense dramas with lighthearted romances during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that earned her the Academy Award for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship before production, and stayed good friends throughout her life; in interviews, Keaton portrayed Annie as an idealized version of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It would be easy, then, to think her acting required little effort. Yet her breadth in her acting, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and inside Annie Hall alone, to discount her skill with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as Allen’s transition between broader, joke-heavy films and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a relationship memoir mixed with painful truths into a ill-fated romance. Likewise, Keaton, led an evolution in American rom-coms, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she blends and combines aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that feels modern even now, cutting her confidence short with uncertain moments.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy first connect after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (although only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a words that embody her anxious charm. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the subsequent moment, as she has indifferent conversation while navigating wildly through city avenues. Later, she composes herself delivering the tune in a nightclub.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her playful craziness – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s attempts to turn her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies death-obsessed). Initially, Annie could appear like an odd character to receive acclaim; she plays the female lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t lead to sufficient transformation to suit each other. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a better match for her co-star. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – failing to replicate her final autonomy.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, the film Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the unconventional story, became a model for the category. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a timeless love story icon even as she was actually playing more wives (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see the holiday film The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair drawn nearer by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in two thousand three with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a man who dates younger women (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a entire category of romances where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) take charge of their destinies. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Keaton was still making these stories just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to dedicate herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

An Exceptional Impact

Ponder: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to originate in a romantic comedy, not to mention multiple, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her