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Numerous great female actors have appeared in rom-coms. Typically, when aiming to win an Oscar, they have to reach for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with effortless grace. Her debut significant performance was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she revisited the character of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious 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 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 dated previously before production, and stayed good friends throughout her life; when speaking publicly, Keaton described Annie as an idealized version of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to think her acting involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her acting, contrasting her dramatic part and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a authentic manner. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, dreamlike moments, and a improvised tapestry of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, embodying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the sexy scatterbrain common in the fifties. Rather, she mixes and matches aspects of both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, interrupting her own boldness with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a game on the courts, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The banter is fast, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton soloing around her nervousness before winding up in a cul-de-sac of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that feeling in the following sequence, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through city avenues. Later, she centers herself delivering the tune in a cabaret.

Dimensionality and Independence

These are not instances of the character’s unpredictability. During the entire story, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone more superficially serious (for him, that implies focused on dying). In the beginning, Annie might seem like an strange pick to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t lead to adequate growth to make it work. However, she transforms, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a more compatible mate for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – nervous habits, eccentric styles – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. But during her absence, the character Annie, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, became a model for the category. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being more wives (if contentedly, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or less so, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her reunion with Allen, they’re a long-married couple united more deeply by funny detective work – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a older playboy (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her final Oscar nomination, and a complete niche of romantic tales where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Keaton was still making such films just last year, a frequent big-screen star. Today viewers must shift from taking that presence for granted to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. If it’s harder to think of present-day versions of such actresses who emulate her path, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to dedicate herself to a genre that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her