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Plenty of great actresses have starred in love stories with humor. Usually, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, followed a reverse trajectory and made it look seamless ease. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. But that same year, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with funny love stories during the 1970s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for leading actress, altering the genre for good.

The Academy Award Part

The award was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted 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 before making the film, and continued as pals throughout her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It would be easy, then, to think her acting meant being herself. But there’s too much range 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 merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between broader, joke-heavy films and a realistic approach. As such, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a doomed romantic relationship. Likewise, Keaton, presides over a transition in U.S. romantic comedies, playing neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. Instead, she blends and combines aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, cutting her confidence short with her own false-start hesitations.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple initially hit it off after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before concluding with of that famous phrase, a words that embody her anxious charm. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through city avenues. Subsequently, she centers herself performing the song in a nightclub.

Dimensionality and Independence

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her playful craziness – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to mold her into someone outwardly grave (in his view, that signifies death-obsessed). Initially, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward adequate growth to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a more compatible mate for the male lead. Plenty of later rom-coms took the obvious elements – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Possibly she grew hesitant of that tendency. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, the film Annie Hall, the persona even more than the unconventional story, emerged as a template for the category. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen while she was in fact portraying more wives (whether happily, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than single gals falling in love. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a long-married couple brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a complete niche of romantic tales where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason 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 realizing what an enormous influence she was on the funny romance as it is recognized. If it’s harder to think of present-day versions of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to commit herself to a genre that’s often just online content for a recent period.

A Special Contribution

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who earned several Oscar nods. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, not to mention multiple, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her