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Plenty of great performers have performed in rom-coms. Ordinarily, when aiming to win an Oscar, they need to shift for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and made it look seamless ease. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an film classic as has ever been made. But that same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a movie version of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched intense dramas with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and it was the latter that secured her the Oscar for best actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

The award was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; when speaking publicly, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, as seen by Allen. One could assume, then, to believe her portrayal meant being herself. However, her versatility in her acting, contrasting her dramatic part and her comedic collaborations and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with rom-coms as merely exuding appeal – even if she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between slapstick-oriented movies and a authentic manner. Consequently, it has lots of humor, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir mixed with painful truths into a doomed romantic relationship. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. Rather, she mixes and matches traits from both to create something entirely new that seems current today, interrupting her own boldness with nervous pauses.

Observe, for instance the moment when Annie and Alvy first connect after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of her whimsical line, a phrase that encapsulates her anxious charm. The movie physicalizes that feeling in the following sequence, as she has indifferent conversation while driving recklessly through New York roads. Subsequently, she centers herself performing the song in a nightclub.

Complexity and Freedom

These are not instances of Annie acting erratic. Across the film, there’s a depth to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her unwillingness to be shaped by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone more superficially serious (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). At first, Annie could appear like an odd character to win an Oscar; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey fails to result in either changing enough to make it work. But Annie evolves, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a better match for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is really her only one from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, served as a blueprint for the style. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s skill to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon despite her real roles being married characters (if contentedly, as in that family comedy, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or parental figures (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair brought closer together by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part smoothly, wonderfully.

But Keaton did have a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? One more Oscar recognition, and a whole subgenre of romances where mature females (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating those movies up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Today viewers must shift from expecting her roles to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine present-day versions of such actresses who walk in her shoes, the reason may be it’s seldom for a star of Keaton’s skill to dedicate herself to a genre that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. 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