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Numerous talented performers have starred 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 seamless ease. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a movie version of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with lighthearted romances during the 1970s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.

The Award-Winning Performance

The award was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and remained close friends for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It might be simple, then, to think her acting involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her performances, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, highly charismatic.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a authentic manner. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a romantic memory alongside sharp observations into a fated love affair. Likewise, Keaton, oversaw a change in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead famous from the ’50s. On the contrary, she blends and combines aspects of both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, interrupting her own boldness with nervous pauses.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially hit it off after a match of tennis, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (even though only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before ending up stuck of that famous phrase, a words that embody her anxious charm. The story embodies that tone in the subsequent moment, as she has indifferent conversation while operating the car carelessly through city avenues. Subsequently, she finds her footing performing the song in a cabaret.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a complexity to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her unwillingness to be shaped by the protagonist’s tries to turn her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies focused on dying). Initially, Annie could appear like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the central couple’s arc fails to result in either changing enough to make it work. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a more compatible mate for the male lead. Plenty of later rom-coms took the obvious elements – nervous habits, eccentric styles – 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; her movie Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. Yet while she was gone, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, became a model for the category. Star Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s skill to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This cast Keaton as like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being married characters (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or the comedy Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses drawn nearer by funny detective work – and she fits the character effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have another major rom-com hit in two thousand three with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a writer in love with a younger-dating cad (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a whole subgenre of romances where senior actresses (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating such films as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Today viewers must shift from assuming her availability to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of such actresses who emulate her path, the reason may be it’s rare for a performer of her talent to commit herself to a category that’s often just online content for a recent period.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are ten active actresses 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 case for Keaton. {Because her