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Plenty of talented female actors have appeared in love stories with humor. Typically, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and made it look seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a cinematic take of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with lighthearted romances across the seventies, and it was the latter that won her an Oscar for best actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star had been in a romantic relationship before making the film, and stayed good friends for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, through Allen’s eyes. One could assume, then, to think her acting involves doing what came naturally. However, her versatility in her performances, contrasting her dramatic part and her Allen comedies and inside Annie Hall alone, to dismiss her facility with romantic comedy as just being charming – even if she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as the director’s evolution between broader, joke-heavy films and a authentic manner. Consequently, it has lots of humor, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in Hollywood love stories, embodying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain common in the fifties. Instead, she blends and combines aspects of both to invent a novel style that seems current today, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a game on the courts, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a lift (although only one of them has a car). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton soloing around her unease before ending up stuck of that famous phrase, a phrase that encapsulates her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that feeling in the following sequence, as she engages in casual chat while operating the car carelessly through city avenues. 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 depth to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by Alvy’s attempts to mold her into someone more superficially serious (which for him means preoccupied with mortality). At first, Annie could appear like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she is the love interest in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc fails to result in sufficient transformation to make it work. However, she transforms, in ways both observable and unknowable. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for the male lead. Many subsequent love stories stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that tendency. After her working relationship with Allen ended, 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 unconventional story, became a model for the genre. Star Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This cast Keaton as like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being more wives (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her comeback with the director, they’re a established married pair drawn nearer by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a man who dates younger women (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? Her last Academy Award nod, and a entire category of love stories where mature females (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. Part of the reason her passing feels so sudden is that she kept producing these stories as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. If it’s harder to think of contemporary counterparts of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who walk in her shoes, the reason may be it’s rare for a performer of her talent to commit herself to a category that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. It’s uncommon for any performance to originate in a romantic comedy, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her