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Numerous talented performers have starred in love stories with humor. Usually, when aiming to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, took an opposite path and executed it with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an American masterpiece as has ever been made. But that same year, she revisited the character of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate serious dramas with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for leading actress, transforming the category forever.

The Oscar-Winning Role

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. The director and star were once romantically involved before production, and remained close friends until her passing; when speaking publicly, Keaton had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, incredibly appealing.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between broader, joke-heavy films and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a romantic memory mixed with painful truths into a fated love affair. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain common in the fifties. Rather, she mixes and matches traits from both to invent a novel style that feels modern even now, interrupting her own boldness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially bond after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (even though only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before concluding with of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her anxious charm. The story embodies that tone in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she composes herself delivering the tune in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. Throughout the movie, there’s a complexity to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her unwillingness to be shaped by the protagonist’s tries to turn her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies focused on dying). In the beginning, the character may look like an odd character to win an Oscar; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey fails to result in sufficient transformation to suit each other. Yet Annie does change, in ways both observable and unknowable. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – without quite emulating her final autonomy.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; her movie Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the persona even more than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s ability to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon despite her real roles being married characters (if contentedly, as in Father of the Bride, or less so, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her comeback with the director, they’re a long-married couple brought closer together by funny detective work – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of romances where senior actresses (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) take charge of their destinies. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating these stories as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from assuming her availability to grasping the significant effect she was on the funny romance as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who walk in her shoes, that’s likely since it’s rare for a performer of her caliber to commit herself to a category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are ten active actresses who earned several Oscar nods. It’s rare for one of those roles to originate in a romantic comedy, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her