🔗 Share this article

Numerous great actresses have performed in rom-coms. Usually, should they desire to win an Oscar, they have to reach for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, charted a different course and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in The Godfather, as weighty an American masterpiece as ever produced. Yet in the same year, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched heavy films with funny love stories across the seventies, and the lighter fare that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

The award was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship before making the film, and stayed good friends until her passing; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. One could assume, then, to assume Keaton’s performance required little effort. But there’s too much range in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – even if 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 realistic approach. As such, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a improvised tapestry of a relationship memoir in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. Likewise, Keaton, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the sexy scatterbrain famous from the ’50s. Rather, she fuses and merges 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 moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (although only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before ending up stuck of “la di da”, a words that embody her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that tone in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Subsequently, she finds her footing performing the song in a nightclub.

Depth and Autonomy

These are not instances of the character’s unpredictability. Throughout the movie, there’s a complexity 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 Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone apparently somber (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 main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward sufficient transformation accommodate the other. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – failing to replicate her final autonomy.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that tendency. Following her collaboration with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, the film Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the free-form film, served as a blueprint for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s ability to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty despite her real roles being matrimonial parts (whether happily, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even in her comeback with Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by funny detective work – and she fits the character smoothly, wonderfully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her final Oscar nomination, and a entire category of love stories where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating those movies up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from taking that presence for granted to understanding the huge impact she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine modern equivalents of such actresses who emulate her path, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to commit herself to a category that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

A Unique Legacy

Consider: 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 example of Keaton. {Because her