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Plenty of great actresses have performed in love stories with humor. Usually, should they desire to win an Oscar, they have to reach for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, took an opposite path and executed it with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever produced. But that same year, she reprised the part of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched heavy films with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane dated previously before making the film, and stayed good friends for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton portrayed Annie as an idealized version of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It might be simple, then, to believe her portrayal involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a doomed romantic relationship. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, embodying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the sexy scatterbrain famous from the ’50s. Instead, she fuses and merges elements from each to create something entirely new that still reads as oddly contemporary, cutting her confidence short with uncertain moments.

Observe, for instance the moment when Annie and Alvy initially bond after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a ride (although only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, 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 tone in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through city avenues. Subsequently, she centers herself performing the song in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. Throughout the movie, there’s a depth to her playful craziness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s efforts to turn her into someone apparently somber (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). At first, Annie could appear like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward adequate growth accommodate the other. However, she transforms, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a more suitable partner for her co-star. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – anxious quirks, eccentric styles – failing to replicate her final autonomy.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Maybe Keaton was wary of that tendency. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she stepped away from romantic comedies; Baby Boom is really her only one from the whole decade of the eighties. Yet while she was gone, the film Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, emerged as a template for the style. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen while she was in fact portraying matrimonial parts (if contentedly, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or the comedy Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her comeback with Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she fits the character easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced a further love story triumph in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of romances where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her loss is so startling is that she kept producing those movies up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. Should it be difficult to recall contemporary counterparts of such actresses who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her talent to commit herself to a genre that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a recent period.

An Exceptional Impact

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s rare for one of those roles to begin in a rom-com, especially not several, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her