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Many great actresses have performed in love stories with humor. Usually, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and executed it with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, about as serious an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. Yet in the same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a movie version of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched heavy films with lighthearted romances during the 1970s, and the comedies that earned her the Academy Award for best actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

The Oscar statuette was for Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane were once romantically involved before production, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to think her acting involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in Keaton’s work, contrasting her dramatic part and her comedic collaborations and throughout that very movie, to dismiss her facility with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as the director’s evolution between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has plenty of gags, imaginative scenes, and a improvised tapestry of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, playing neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. On the contrary, she mixes and matches elements from each to forge a fresh approach that feels modern even now, halting her assertiveness with uncertain moments.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (despite the fact that only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her own discomfort before concluding with of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The story embodies that feeling in the next scene, as she engages in casual chat while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Subsequently, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a nightclub.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of Annie acting erratic. Across the film, there’s a complexity to her playful craziness – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her resistance to control by Alvy’s attempts to turn her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies preoccupied with mortality). At first, the character may look like an odd character to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward either changing enough accommodate the other. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a better match for her co-star. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – nervous habits, odd clothing – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the whole decade of the eighties. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the category. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This cast Keaton as like a permanent rom-com queen while she was in fact portraying more wives (be it joyfully, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her reunion with Woody Allen, they’re a long-married couple united more deeply by funny detective work – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? One more Oscar recognition, and a whole subgenre of romances where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making those movies just last year, a constant multiplex presence. Today viewers must shift from expecting her roles to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her caliber to commit herself to a category that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her