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Numerous talented female actors have appeared in love stories with humor. Typically, if they want to win an Oscar, they have to reach for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever created. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with funny love stories during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that earned her the Academy Award for outstanding actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

The award was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, 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; in interviews, Keaton portrayed Annie as an idealized version of herself, from Allen’s perspective. One could assume, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her performances, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with rom-coms as just being charming – though she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Shifting Genres

The film famously functioned as Allen’s shift between broader, joke-heavy films and a authentic manner. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. Rather, she mixes and matches traits from both to invent a novel style that feels modern even now, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple initially hit it off after a game on the courts, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a lift (despite the fact that only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but veers erratically, with Keaton soloing around her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her nervous whimsy. The story embodies that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she engages in casual chat while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Later, she composes herself performing the song in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, there’s a depth to her playful craziness – her post-hippie openness to try drugs, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s efforts to shape her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies focused on dying). At first, the character may look like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc fails to result in adequate growth accommodate the other. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She simply fails to turn into a more suitable partner for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms took the obvious elements – anxious quirks, eccentric styles – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. After her working relationship with Allen concluded, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, became a model for the style. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being more wives (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than single gals falling in love. Even during her return with the director, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in two thousand three with Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a entire category of romances where mature females (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her passing feels so sudden is that Keaton was still making those movies just last year, a frequent big-screen star. 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. If it’s harder to think of contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to commit herself to a category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a long time.

An Exceptional Impact

Reflect: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. It’s uncommon for any performance to begin in a rom-com, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her