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Many accomplished performers have performed in rom-coms. Usually, if they want to win an Oscar, they need to shift for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, charted a different course and executed it with disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. Yet in the same year, she reprised the part of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a cinematic take of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with romantic comedies across the seventies, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star had been in a romantic relationship before production, and continued as pals until her passing; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her acting, from her Godfather role and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – even if she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a realistic approach. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a loose collage of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. Likewise, Keaton, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, playing neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. Rather, she fuses and merges elements from each to invent a novel style that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially bond after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (despite the fact that only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton soloing around her unease before ending up stuck of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The story embodies that tone in the next scene, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through city avenues. Later, she centers herself delivering the tune in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These aren’t examples of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her light zaniness – her hippie-hangover willingness to sample narcotics, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies death-obsessed). Initially, Annie could appear like an odd character to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t lead to adequate growth to suit each other. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a more suitable partner for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – nervous habits, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Possibly she grew hesitant of that trend. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; her movie Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, the film Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, became a model for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Diane’s talent to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being matrimonial parts (whether happily, as in that family comedy, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or parental figures (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her reunion with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair drawn nearer by funny detective work – and she fits the character easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed a further love story triumph in two thousand three with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of love stories where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making those movies as recently as last year, a regular cinema fixture. Today viewers must shift from assuming her availability to understanding the huge impact she was on the funny romance as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine modern equivalents of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to devote herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

A Unique Legacy

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s rare for one of those roles to originate in a romantic comedy, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her