🔗 Share this article

Numerous great performers have starred in rom-coms. Usually, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they have to reach for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, 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 won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. The director and star dated previously before making the film, and remained close friends for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, as seen by Allen. One could assume, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, incredibly appealing.

A Transition in Style

The film famously functioned as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has lots of humor, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in U.S. romantic comedies, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain common in the fifties. Instead, she mixes and matches elements from each to create something entirely new that seems current today, cutting her confidence short with uncertain moments.

See, as an example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially bond after a match of tennis, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a lift (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The film manifests that sensibility in the next scene, as she engages in casual chat while operating the car carelessly through Manhattan streets. Subsequently, she composes herself singing It Had to Be You in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

This is not evidence of the character’s unpredictability. Throughout the movie, there’s a dimensionality to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s attempts to turn her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies focused on dying). Initially, the character may look like an unusual choice to receive acclaim; she plays the female lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the central couple’s arc fails to result in either changing enough to suit each other. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She simply fails to turn into a better match for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – nervous habits, quirky fashions – not fully copying her final autonomy.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Maybe Keaton was wary of that trend. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is really her only one from the entirety of the 1980s. Yet while she was gone, the character Annie, the persona even more than the unconventional story, became a model for the genre. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a permanent rom-com queen even as she was actually playing married characters (if contentedly, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a long-married couple brought closer together by funny detective work – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? One more Oscar recognition, and a whole subgenre of romances where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason her loss is so startling is that she kept producing such films 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. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of such actresses who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to dedicate herself to a genre that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to start in a light love story, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her