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Plenty of talented female actors have appeared in rom-coms. Ordinarily, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they need to shift for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, about as serious an American masterpiece as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she returned to the role of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled serious dramas with lighthearted romances during the 1970s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for best actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton as the title character, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship before making the film, and stayed good friends for the rest of her life; when speaking publicly, Keaton described Annie as an idealized version of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It might be simple, then, to believe her portrayal meant being herself. But there’s too much range in Keaton’s work, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s transition between slapstick-oriented movies and a authentic manner. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a romantic memory mixed with painful truths into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, led an evolution in American rom-coms, playing neither the fast-talking screwball type or the glamorous airhead popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she fuses and merges elements from each to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.

Observe, for instance the sequence with the couple initially bond after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (although only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton maneuvering through her own discomfort before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The story embodies that tone in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through New York roads. Afterward, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a club venue.

Depth and Autonomy

These aren’t examples of Annie being unstable. Throughout the movie, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s efforts to shape her into someone more superficially serious (for him, that implies focused on dying). In the beginning, the character may look like an strange pick to win an Oscar; 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. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a more compatible mate for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms took the obvious elements – anxious quirks, quirky fashions – not fully copying Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. Post her professional partnership with Allen ended, she stepped away from romantic comedies; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. Yet while she was gone, the film Annie Hall, the persona even more than the unconventional story, became a model for the genre. Star Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being matrimonial parts (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with the director, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a older playboy (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her final Oscar nomination, and a entire category of love stories where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. Part of the reason her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making those movies up until recently, 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 modern equivalents of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to devote herself to a style that’s often just online content for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Consider: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s unusual for a single part to begin in a rom-com, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her