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Many great actresses have performed in love stories with humor. Typically, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they need to shift for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and executed it with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, as dramatic an cinematic masterpiece as ever created. But that same year, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with lighthearted romances across the seventies, and it was the latter 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, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. 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 had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance meant being herself. But there’s too much range in her performances, from her Godfather role and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. As such, it has lots of humor, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a doomed romantic relationship. Likewise, Keaton, presides over a transition in U.S. romantic comedies, playing neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the glamorous airhead popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she mixes and matches aspects of both to invent a novel style that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy first connect after a match of tennis, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a ride (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The dialogue is quick, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her unease before ending up stuck of “la di da”, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The story embodies that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through New York roads. Afterward, she composes herself delivering the tune in a nightclub.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her hippie-hangover willingness to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to turn her into someone more superficially serious (in his view, that signifies preoccupied with mortality). In the beginning, the character may look like an odd character to win an Oscar; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t bend toward either changing enough to suit each other. But Annie evolves, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a more compatible mate for Alvy. Many subsequent love stories borrowed the surface traits – nervous habits, quirky fashions – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. Post her professional partnership with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, the film Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, served as a blueprint for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This made Keaton seem like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being married characters (be it joyfully, as in that family comedy, or less so, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see that Christmas movie or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a older playboy (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a whole subgenre of romantic tales where mature females (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her passing feels so sudden is that Keaton was still making these stories up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Today viewers must shift 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 Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, the reason may be it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to devote herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a long time.

A Unique Legacy

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors who have been nominated multiple times. It’s uncommon for any performance to originate in a romantic comedy, especially not several, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her