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Many accomplished actresses have performed in love stories with humor. Typically, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they have to reach for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with disarmingly natural. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. Yet in the same year, she returned to the role of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a cinematic take of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and the lighter fare that earned her the Academy Award for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship before making the film, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton described Annie as an idealized version of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to think her acting involves doing what came naturally. However, her versatility in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to discount her skill with rom-coms as just being charming – even if she was, of course, tremendously charming.

Shifting Genres

The film famously functioned as the director’s evolution between broader, joke-heavy films and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has numerous jokes, imaginative scenes, and a loose collage of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. Instead, she blends and combines aspects of both to create something entirely new that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially bond after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (despite the fact that only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The story embodies that tone in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Afterward, she centers herself singing It Had to Be You in a nightclub.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. During the entire story, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s efforts to shape her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies focused on dying). At first, the character may look like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t bend toward sufficient transformation to suit each other. But Annie evolves, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a more suitable partner for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Possibly she grew hesitant of that trend. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. However, in her hiatus, Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, served as a blueprint for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a everlasting comedy royalty while she was in fact portraying matrimonial parts (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see the holiday film The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed a further love story triumph in two thousand three with Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a younger-dating cad (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of romances where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. One factor her passing feels so sudden is that Diane continued creating those movies just last year, a constant multiplex presence. Now audiences will be pivoting from taking that presence for granted to understanding the huge impact she was on the romantic comedy as we know it. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who emulate her path, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of her caliber to dedicate herself to a category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to begin in a rom-com, let alone half of them, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her