Numerous great performers have performed in love stories with humor. Ordinarily, should they desire to receive Oscar recognition, they have to reach for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an American masterpiece as has ever been made. Yet in the same year, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled intense dramas with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for best actress, altering the genre for good.
The Academy Award Part
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 were once romantically involved before production, and continued as pals until her passing; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance meant being herself. However, her versatility in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as merely exuding appeal – though she was, of course, tremendously charming.
Evolving Comedy
Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has lots of humor, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a romantic memory mixed with painful truths into a doomed romantic relationship. Likewise, Keaton, oversaw a change in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she mixes and matches aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.
Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially hit it off after a game on the courts, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a car trip (despite the fact that only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her unease before concluding with of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The story embodies that tone in the following sequence, as she has indifferent conversation while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she finds her footing performing the song in a club venue.
Complexity and Freedom
This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s efforts to turn her into someone more superficially serious (for him, that implies preoccupied with mortality). Initially, the character may look like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t lead to either changing enough to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She just doesn’t become a better match for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – anxious quirks, eccentric styles – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.
Enduring Impact and Mature Parts
Possibly she grew hesitant of that trend. After her working relationship with Allen ended, she stepped away from romantic comedies; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. However, in her hiatus, the film Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the unconventional story, served as a blueprint for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Diane’s talent to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon even as she was actually playing more wives (whether happily, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she fits the character smoothly, wonderfully.
Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in two thousand three with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a man who dates younger women (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of romantic tales where senior actresses (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reclaim their love lives. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating those movies just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the romantic comedy as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall present-day versions of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to commit herself to a category that’s often just online content for a recent period.
A Unique Legacy
Consider: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to begin in a rom-com, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her
