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Plenty of great actresses have appeared in romantic comedies. Usually, when aiming to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and executed it with effortless grace. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as ever produced. But that same year, she reprised the part of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a film adaptation of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched heavy films with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and it was the latter that secured her the Oscar for leading actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship before production, and remained close friends until her passing; when speaking publicly, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. One could assume, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. However, her versatility in her performances, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to dismiss her facility with rom-coms as merely exuding appeal – though she was, of course, highly charismatic.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s shift between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a loose collage of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in U.S. romantic comedies, embodying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. On the contrary, she mixes and matches aspects of both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, interrupting her own boldness with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (despite the fact that only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton soloing around her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her anxious charm. The film manifests that tone in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she composes herself performing the song in a nightclub.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, there’s a dimensionality to her playful craziness – her hippie-hangover willingness to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s efforts to turn her into someone outwardly grave (in his view, that signifies death-obsessed). At first, Annie could appear like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward either changing enough accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a more compatible mate for the male lead. Many subsequent love stories took the obvious elements – nervous habits, odd clothing – not fully copying her final autonomy.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that trend. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the loosely structured movie, emerged as a template 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 cast Keaton as like a everlasting comedy royalty even as she was actually playing matrimonial parts (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a established married pair united more deeply by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a playwright in love with a man who dates younger women (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a complete niche of romances where mature females (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Keaton was still making such films as recently as last year, a constant multiplex presence. Today viewers must shift from expecting her roles to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of such actresses who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to commit herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: 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 situation with Diane. {Because her