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Plenty of great actresses have performed in love stories with humor. Ordinarily, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and executed it with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as ever created. But that same year, she returned to the role 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 persistently switched intense dramas with funny love stories across the seventies, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.

The Award-Winning Performance

The Oscar statuette was for Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton as the title character, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. Woody and Diane dated previously prior to filming, and stayed good friends for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, through Allen’s eyes. One could assume, then, to believe her portrayal required little effort. However, her versatility in Keaton’s work, contrasting her dramatic part and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to dismiss her facility with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. Consequently, it has lots of humor, fantasy sequences, and a loose collage of a romantic memory alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. Instead, she fuses and merges aspects of both to invent a novel style that feels modern even now, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

Watch, for example the sequence with the couple first connect after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (even though only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton soloing around her nervousness before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a words that embody her anxious charm. The film manifests that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she has indifferent conversation while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she centers herself delivering the tune in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These are not instances of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, there’s a dimensionality to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to experiment with substances, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to turn her into someone outwardly grave (in his view, that signifies preoccupied with mortality). At first, the character may look like an strange pick to earn an award; she is the love interest in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the main pair’s journey fails to result in sufficient transformation to suit each other. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that trend. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, the character Annie, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, became a model for the style. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon while she was in fact portraying more wives (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a long-married couple brought closer together by funny detective work – and she fits the character easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced a further love story triumph in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a man who dates younger women (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a entire category of romances where senior actresses (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason her passing feels so sudden is that Diane continued creating these stories up until recently, a constant multiplex presence. Now fans are turning from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine modern equivalents of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to devote herself to a category that’s often just online content for a long time.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s unusual for a single part to begin in a rom-com, let alone half of them, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her