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Numerous accomplished performers have appeared in romantic comedies. Typically, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, took an opposite path and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as ever created. However, concurrently, she returned to the role of the character Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched intense dramas with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and the lighter fare that secured her the Oscar for best actress, transforming the category forever.

The Award-Winning Performance

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton dated previously prior to filming, and continued as pals throughout her life; during conversations, Keaton portrayed Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. One could assume, then, to believe her portrayal meant being herself. However, her versatility in her performances, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as Allen’s shift between more gag-based broad comedies and a realistic approach. As such, it has numerous jokes, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a doomed romantic relationship. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, embodying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the sexy scatterbrain common in the fifties. Rather, she blends and combines elements from each to create something entirely new that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a tennis game, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (despite the fact that only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of her whimsical line, a words that embody her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through New York roads. Afterward, she finds her footing performing the song in a club venue.

Depth and Autonomy

These are not instances of Annie acting erratic. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone more superficially serious (which for him means death-obsessed). At first, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to earn an award; she is the love interest in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t lead to sufficient transformation to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in ways both observable and unknowable. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – nervous habits, odd clothing – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that tendency. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; her movie Baby Boom is really her only one from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, the film Annie Hall, the persona even more than the loosely structured movie, emerged as a template for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s ability to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being married characters (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even in her comeback with the director, they’re a established married pair brought closer together by comic amateur sleuthing – and she fits the character smoothly, wonderfully.

But Keaton did have another major rom-com hit in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? Her final Oscar nomination, and a whole subgenre of romantic tales where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason her passing feels so sudden is that she kept producing these stories just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the romantic comedy as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of her talent to commit herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a while now.

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 example of Keaton. {Because her