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Plenty of talented actresses have starred in love stories with humor. Usually, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they need to shift for weightier characters. 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, as dramatic an American masterpiece as ever created. But that same year, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate intense dramas with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that secured her the Oscar for best actress, transforming the category forever.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star had been in a romantic relationship before production, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to believe her portrayal involves doing what came naturally. However, her versatility in Keaton’s work, both between her Godfather performance and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s transition between broader, joke-heavy films and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, playing neither the fast-talking screwball type or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. On the contrary, she fuses and merges aspects of both to invent a novel style that still reads as oddly contemporary, interrupting her own boldness with her own false-start hesitations.

Observe, for instance the sequence with the couple initially bond after a match of tennis, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The dialogue is quick, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton soloing around her own discomfort before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the next scene, as she has indifferent conversation while operating the car carelessly through city avenues. Afterward, she finds her footing performing the song in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, 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 efforts to turn her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies focused on dying). At first, Annie could appear like an unusual choice to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t lead to sufficient transformation to make it work. However, she transforms, in ways both observable and unknowable. She simply fails to turn into a better match for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms borrowed the surface traits – anxious quirks, quirky fashions – not fully copying her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Allen concluded, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, served as a blueprint for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Diane’s talent to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This made Keaton seem like a everlasting comedy royalty even as she was actually playing matrimonial parts (if contentedly, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see the holiday film The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her comeback with Allen, they’re a established married pair drawn nearer by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part smoothly, wonderfully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, 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 entire category of love stories where mature females (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making such films just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles to understanding the huge impact she was on the funny romance as it is recognized. Should it be difficult to recall contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who emulate her path, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to dedicate herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

A Special Contribution

Reflect: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her