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Plenty of accomplished performers have appeared in rom-coms. Usually, when aiming to win an Oscar, they must turn for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, followed a reverse trajectory and made it look seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as has ever been made. Yet in the same year, she revisited the character of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate serious dramas with funny love stories during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton dated previously prior to filming, and remained close friends throughout her life; during conversations, Keaton described Annie as a perfect image of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to think her acting required little effort. However, her versatility in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with rom-coms as just being charming – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in U.S. romantic comedies, portraying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. On the contrary, she blends and combines elements from each to invent a novel style that seems current today, interrupting her own boldness with uncertain moments.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a tennis game, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (even though only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before concluding with of “la di da”, a words that embody her anxious charm. The film manifests that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through Manhattan streets. Subsequently, she composes herself singing It Had to Be You in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies death-obsessed). At first, Annie could appear like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t lead to sufficient transformation to make it work. However, she transforms, in manners visible and hidden. She just doesn’t become a better match for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films borrowed the surface traits – nervous habits, quirky fashions – not fully copying her final autonomy.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Possibly she grew hesitant of that tendency. Following her collaboration with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the whole decade of the eighties. But during her absence, the character Annie, the persona even more than the free-form film, became a model for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Diane’s talent to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty while she was in fact portraying married characters (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or less so, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a long-married couple brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a man who dates younger women (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a entire category of romances where senior actresses (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her passing feels so sudden is that Diane continued creating these stories up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Now fans are turning from assuming her availability to understanding the huge impact she was on the romantic comedy as we know it. Is it tough to imagine present-day versions of such actresses 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 category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are 10 living female actors who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, not to mention multiple, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her