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Many great female actors have performed in romantic comedies. Typically, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and executed it with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate intense dramas with lighthearted romances throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star were once romantically involved before making the film, and stayed good friends until her passing; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It might be simple, then, to think her acting meant being herself. Yet her breadth in Keaton’s work, contrasting her dramatic part and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between broader, joke-heavy films and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a loose collage of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she blends and combines aspects of both to create something entirely new that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially hit it off after a game on the courts, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (despite the fact that only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton soloing around her nervousness before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a words that embody her nervous whimsy. The film manifests that sensibility in the next scene, as she engages in casual chat while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Afterward, she centers herself singing It Had to Be You in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These aren’t examples of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her playful craziness – her hippie-hangover willingness to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her unwillingness to be shaped by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies death-obsessed). Initially, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward either changing enough to suit each other. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – nervous habits, eccentric styles – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. After her working relationship with Allen ended, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, the film Annie Hall, the persona even more than the free-form film, served as a blueprint for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This cast Keaton as like a everlasting comedy royalty while she was in fact portraying married characters (whether happily, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her comeback with the director, they’re a established married pair brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part effortlessly, gracefully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed an additional romantic comedy success in two thousand three with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a whole subgenre of love stories where mature females (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that Keaton was still making those movies up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Today viewers must shift from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine present-day versions of such actresses who emulate her path, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to dedicate herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are ten active actresses who earned several Oscar nods. It’s uncommon for any performance to start in a light love story, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her