From the film Annie Hall to Something’s Gotta Give: Diane Keaton Was the Definitive Rom-Com Royalty.
Numerous talented female actors have starred in romantic comedies. Ordinarily, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they need to shift for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and executed it with effortless grace. Her initial breakout part was in The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as ever created. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of the character 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 across the seventies, and the comedies that earned her the Academy Award for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.
The Award-Winning Performance
The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and remained close friends for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton portrayed Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her performances, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to discount her skill with rom-coms as merely exuding appeal – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.
Shifting Genres
Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has numerous jokes, fantasy sequences, and a loose collage of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a fated love affair. Likewise, Keaton, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, playing neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. On the contrary, she blends and combines traits from both to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, cutting her confidence short with her own false-start hesitations.
Watch, for example the sequence with the couple initially hit it off after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a car trip (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton maneuvering through her own discomfort before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The story embodies that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she has indifferent conversation while driving recklessly through city avenues. Subsequently, she centers herself singing It Had to Be You in a nightclub.
Depth and Autonomy
These aren’t examples of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone more superficially serious (which for him means focused on dying). Initially, Annie could appear like an strange pick 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 accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – not fully copying Annie’s ultimate independence.
Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters
Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the whole decade of the eighties. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the free-form film, became a model for the genre. Star Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This made Keaton seem like a everlasting comedy royalty while she was in fact portraying matrimonial parts (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or parental figures (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair drawn nearer by funny detective work – and she slips into that role smoothly, wonderfully.
Yet Diane experienced a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of romantic tales where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that she kept producing such films just last year, a constant multiplex presence. Now fans are turning from expecting her roles to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as it is recognized. Should it be difficult to recall contemporary counterparts of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of her caliber to devote herself to a genre that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.
A Special Contribution
Reflect: there are 10 living female actors who have been nominated multiple times. It’s unusual for a single part to originate in a romantic comedy, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her
