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Plenty of talented performers have performed in rom-coms. Usually, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they need to shift for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, took an opposite path and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as ever created. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled heavy films with lighthearted romances across the seventies, and it was the latter that won her an Oscar for leading actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved prior to filming, and remained close friends until her passing; during conversations, Keaton portrayed Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance required little effort. However, her versatility in her acting, contrasting her dramatic part and her Allen comedies and throughout that very movie, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. As such, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a loose collage of a romantic memory alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in U.S. romantic comedies, embodying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she blends and combines traits from both to create something entirely new that still reads as oddly contemporary, interrupting her own boldness with uncertain moments.

Watch, for example the sequence with the couple first connect after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a lift (although only just one drives). The banter is fast, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her unease before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that feeling in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Afterward, she centers herself performing the song in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies death-obsessed). At first, the character may look like an unusual choice to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t lead to sufficient transformation to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a more suitable partner for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films borrowed the surface traits – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Possibly she grew hesitant of that tendency. Following her collaboration with Allen concluded, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s skill to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being matrimonial parts (if contentedly, as in that family comedy, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part effortlessly, gracefully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in two thousand three with Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of love stories where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making these stories up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Now fans are turning from expecting her roles to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her talent to devote herself to a category that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a recent period.

A Special Contribution

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s unusual for a single part to originate in a romantic comedy, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her