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Numerous talented female actors have starred in romantic comedies. Usually, should they desire to win an Oscar, they must turn for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and executed it with disarmingly natural. Her debut significant performance was in the classic The Godfather, about as serious 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 movie version of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

The award was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. The director and star were once romantically involved before making the film, and remained close friends until her passing; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. It would be easy, then, to believe her portrayal required little effort. But there’s too much range in her performances, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to dismiss her facility with rom-coms as just being charming – though she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a relationship memoir mixed with painful truths into a doomed romantic relationship. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the sexy scatterbrain popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she fuses and merges aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a tennis game, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (despite the fact that only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton maneuvering through her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Afterward, she composes herself singing It Had to Be You in a cabaret.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. Throughout the movie, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to sample narcotics, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to mold her into someone more superficially serious (in his view, that signifies death-obsessed). In the beginning, the character may look like an strange pick to receive acclaim; 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 adequate growth accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a more compatible mate for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – nervous habits, eccentric styles – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that tendency. Following her collaboration with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is really her only one from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the category. Actress 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 permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being more wives (if contentedly, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see that Christmas movie or the comedy Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her comeback with the director, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have a further love story triumph in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a younger-dating cad (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, 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 loss is so startling is that she kept producing such films up until recently, a constant multiplex presence. Today viewers must shift from assuming her availability to understanding the huge impact she was on the funny romance as it exists today. If it’s harder to think of contemporary counterparts of such actresses who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to dedicate herself to a genre that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a recent period.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s unusual for a single part to start in a light love story, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her