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Numerous talented actresses have starred in love stories with humor. Typically, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they have to reach for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and executed it with disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, as weighty an cinematic masterpiece as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she returned to the role of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate intense dramas with funny love stories across the seventies, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star dated previously before making the film, and stayed good friends throughout her life; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. It would be easy, then, to believe her portrayal required little effort. But there’s too much range in her performances, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies 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.

Shifting Genres

The film famously functioned as the director’s evolution between broader, joke-heavy films and a realistic approach. Consequently, it has numerous jokes, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a fated love affair. Likewise, Keaton, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, playing neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she fuses and merges aspects of both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, halting her assertiveness with uncertain moments.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially bond after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a ride (despite the fact that only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton soloing around her own discomfort before ending up stuck of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her anxious charm. The story embodies that sensibility in the subsequent moment, as she engages in casual chat while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Subsequently, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a nightclub.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Throughout the movie, there’s a dimensionality to her playful craziness – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies focused on dying). At first, Annie might seem like an odd character to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t lead to adequate growth to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for the male lead. Plenty of later rom-coms borrowed the surface traits – anxious quirks, quirky fashions – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that tendency. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she stepped away from romantic comedies; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the entirety of the 1980s. However, in her hiatus, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, became a model for the category. Star Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to embody brains and whimsy at once. This cast Keaton as like a timeless love story icon while she was in fact portraying more wives (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or less so, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or parental figures (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a long-married couple united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she fits the character easily, beautifully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in two thousand three with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a man who dates younger women (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a entire category of romantic tales where senior actresses (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reclaim their love lives. One factor her loss is so startling is that she kept producing these stories up until recently, a frequent big-screen star. Today viewers must shift from taking that presence for granted to understanding the huge impact she was on the funny romance as we know it. If it’s harder to think of present-day versions of those earlier stars who emulate her path, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of Keaton’s skill to dedicate herself to a category that’s often just online content for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Reflect: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s unusual for a single part to start in a light love story, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her