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Numerous great actresses have appeared in rom-coms. Ordinarily, should they desire to earn an Academy Award, they have to reach for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, charted a different course and made it look disarmingly natural. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an American masterpiece as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a cinematic take of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled heavy films with lighthearted romances across the seventies, and the lighter fare that earned her the Academy Award for leading actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship before production, and stayed good friends until her passing; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It might be simple, then, to think her acting required little effort. However, her versatility in her performances, contrasting her dramatic part and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to underestimate her talent with romantic comedy as merely exuding appeal – even if she was, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has numerous jokes, imaginative scenes, and a improvised tapestry of a love story recollection mixed with painful truths into a fated love affair. Likewise, Keaton, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, embodying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz famous from the ’50s. On the contrary, she blends and combines elements from each to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple initially hit it off after a match of tennis, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (although only one of them has a car). The banter is fast, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her own discomfort before winding up in a cul-de-sac of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the next scene, as she has indifferent conversation while operating the car carelessly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she composes herself delivering the tune in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her gentle eccentricity – her lingering counterculture curiosity to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone outwardly grave (which for him means focused on dying). Initially, Annie could appear like an strange pick to earn an award; she’s the romantic lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward adequate growth accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a better match for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – anxious quirks, quirky fashions – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Possibly she grew hesitant of that tendency. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she stepped away from romantic comedies; her movie Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, served as a blueprint for the category. Actress 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 timeless love story icon even as she was actually playing matrimonial parts (if contentedly, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or less so, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or mothers (see the holiday film The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her reunion with Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses drawn nearer by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role smoothly, wonderfully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a older playboy (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of romantic tales where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her passing feels so sudden is that Keaton was still making these stories as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now fans are turning from assuming her availability to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as we know it. If it’s harder to think of modern equivalents of those earlier stars who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of Keaton’s skill to devote herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Ponder: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to originate in a romantic comedy, not to mention multiple, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her