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Plenty of great performers have performed in love stories with humor. Usually, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they have to reach for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. However, concurrently, she revisited the character of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a film adaptation of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with funny love stories during the 1970s, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for best actress, transforming the category forever.

The Academy Award Part

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane were once romantically involved prior to filming, and remained close friends for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to believe her portrayal involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. Therefore, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she mixes and matches elements from each to forge a fresh approach that seems current today, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

Watch, for example the sequence with the couple initially bond after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (despite the fact that only a single one owns a vehicle). The banter is fast, but veers erratically, with Keaton navigating her unease before concluding with of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The film manifests that feeling in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while driving recklessly through city avenues. Later, she finds her footing delivering the tune in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

These are not instances of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to try drugs, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s attempts to mold her into someone more superficially serious (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). In the beginning, the character may look like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she is the love interest in a film told from a male perspective, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward adequate growth to make it work. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that tendency. After her working relationship with Allen concluded, she stepped away from romantic comedies; the film Baby Boom is really her only one from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the loosely structured movie, served as a blueprint for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to embody brains and whimsy at once. This cast Keaton as like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being more wives (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with the director, they’re a long-married couple drawn nearer by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a man who dates younger women (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? Her final Oscar nomination, and a whole subgenre of love stories where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. Part of the reason her passing feels so sudden is that she kept producing these stories as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Today viewers must shift from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. 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 talent to commit herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Consider: 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 case for Keaton. {Because her