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Numerous accomplished female actors have appeared in rom-coms. Ordinarily, should they desire to win an Oscar, they need to shift for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, followed a reverse trajectory and executed it with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever produced. But that same year, she revisited the character of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with lighthearted romances throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that secured her the 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 in the lead role, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and remained close friends until her passing; during conversations, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to think her acting meant being herself. Yet her breadth in Keaton’s work, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with funny romances as just being charming – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Shifting Genres

Annie Hall notably acted as the director’s evolution between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a fated love affair. Keaton, similarly, led an evolution in American rom-coms, playing neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. Rather, she mixes and matches aspects of both to invent a novel style that still reads as oddly contemporary, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy first connect after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The banter is fast, but veers erratically, with Keaton soloing around her nervousness before concluding with of that famous phrase, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that tone in the next scene, as she has indifferent conversation while driving recklessly through Manhattan streets. Subsequently, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a nightclub.

Depth and Autonomy

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her playful craziness – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by Alvy’s attempts to turn her into someone apparently somber (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). In the beginning, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to earn an award; 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 make it work. However, she transforms, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a more compatible mate for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – not fully copying her core self-reliance.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. After her working relationship with Allen concluded, she paused her lighthearted roles; Baby Boom is really her only one from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, the film Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, emerged as a template for the category. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a everlasting comedy royalty while she was in fact portraying more wives (be it joyfully, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or the comedy Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even during her return with the director, they’re a established married pair united more deeply by funny detective work – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a younger-dating cad (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a entire category of romantic tales where mature females (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reclaim their love lives. One factor her loss is so startling is that she kept producing such films as recently as last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now fans are turning from expecting her roles to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. If it’s harder to think of present-day versions of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who emulate her path, the reason may be it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to commit herself to a style that’s often just online content for a recent period.

An Exceptional Impact

Reflect: there are ten active actresses who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to begin in a rom-com, let alone half of them, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her