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Plenty of talented performers have starred in romantic comedies. Ordinarily, when aiming to earn an Academy Award, they have to reach for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, followed a reverse trajectory and made it look seamless ease. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as has ever been made. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a cinematic take of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched heavy films with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for leading actress, transforming the category forever.

The Oscar-Winning Role

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. The director and star were once romantically involved prior to filming, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. One could assume, then, to think her acting involves doing what came naturally. However, her versatility in Keaton’s work, both between her Godfather performance and her Allen comedies and within Annie Hall itself, to dismiss her facility with funny romances as just being charming – 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. As such, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a fated love affair. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in U.S. romantic comedies, embodying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the sexy scatterbrain popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she blends and combines aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially hit it off after a tennis game, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a lift (although only one of them has a car). The banter is fast, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton soloing around her own discomfort before concluding with of that famous phrase, a phrase that encapsulates her nervous whimsy. The film manifests that sensibility in the following sequence, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through Manhattan streets. Subsequently, she composes herself performing the song in a nightclub.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of the character’s unpredictability. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to sample narcotics, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone outwardly grave (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). Initially, Annie could appear like an odd character to earn an award; she is the love interest in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t bend toward either changing enough accommodate the other. However, she transforms, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a better match for the male lead. Plenty of later rom-coms borrowed the surface traits – nervous habits, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that tendency. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; her movie Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, served as a blueprint for the genre. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being married characters (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses drawn nearer by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part effortlessly, gracefully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a writer in love with a younger-dating cad (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a entire category of romances where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that she kept producing these stories just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now fans are turning from expecting her roles to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the funny romance as we know it. If it’s harder to think of contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her talent to dedicate herself to a category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

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, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her