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Numerous great performers have performed in romantic comedies. Usually, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, followed a reverse trajectory and executed it with effortless grace. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an American masterpiece as ever created. Yet in the same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled heavy films with lighthearted romances across the seventies, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and continued as pals until her passing; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to dismiss her facility with funny romances as merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Shifting Genres

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between slapstick-oriented movies and a authentic manner. Therefore, it has lots of humor, fantasy sequences, and a freewheeling patchwork of a romantic memory alongside sharp observations into a doomed romantic relationship. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, embodying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. On the contrary, she blends and combines aspects of both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a match of tennis, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before concluding with of that famous phrase, a words that embody her nervous whimsy. The story embodies that tone in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through city avenues. Subsequently, she composes herself delivering the tune in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These are not instances of the character’s unpredictability. Throughout the movie, there’s a dimensionality to her playful craziness – her hippie-hangover willingness to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by Alvy’s efforts to mold her into someone apparently somber (which for him means death-obsessed). Initially, Annie could appear like an strange pick to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory fails to result in adequate growth to suit each other. But Annie evolves, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a better match for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. After her working relationship with Allen concluded, she stepped away from romantic comedies; her movie Baby Boom is really her only one from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the persona even more than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the style. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty even as she was actually playing more wives (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see the holiday film The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even during her return with Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she fits the character effortlessly, gracefully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed an additional romantic comedy success in two thousand three with the film 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 whole subgenre of romantic tales where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her loss is so startling is that she kept producing such films up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Now fans are turning from taking that presence for granted to understanding the huge impact she was on the rom-com genre as it is recognized. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of such actresses who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of Keaton’s skill to commit herself to a genre that’s often just online content for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s unusual for a single part to originate in a romantic comedy, let alone half of them, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her