The romantic comedy genre is essentially as old as cinema itself, existing in various forms since the days of Buster Keaton and silent films. In the ’30s and ’40s, films like Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934), George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story (1940), and Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) fleshed out these narratives and elevated the subject matter, introducing many of the genre conventions that would become commonplace: love at first sight, whirlwind expedited courtships, love triangles, sweeping romantic gestures, etc. Slapstick rom-coms like Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940) helped develop the genre even further, placing the female character in the lead protagonist role and focusing more heavily on comedic elements. In the ’50s, legendary director Billy Wilder carried the torch by crafting lush technicolor romantic comedies to showcase the icons of the golden age: Rock Hudson, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Gary Cooper, and of course, Marilyn Monroe.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
In the ’70s, movies like Harold and Maude (1971) and Annie Hall (1977) pushed at the boundaries of what these films could be. They portrayed complicated romances, often focusing on the struggles in adapting to evolving gender and identity politics. Albert Brooks’ Modern Romance (1981) and Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie (1982) cleverly heightened these ideas to the level of parody, while modern classics like Broadcast News (1987) and Moonstruck (1987) built on the successes of the ’70s progressive style to great effect. It’s useful to understand When Harry Met Sally…(1989) in the grander context of romantic comedy, as it essentially set the standard for the genre in perpetuity. Directed by Rob Reiner and written by rom-com royalty Nora Ephron, the film suggests clichéd genre conventions and then discards them, and it deftly weaves in discussions about gender politics that also function as punchlines. And by virtue of it having been written by a woman, it provides arguably the most well-rounded romantic portrayal in cinema history.
A Fateful Encounter
Castle Rock Entertainment
Harry and Sally meet in 1977 on the last day of college. They’ve arranged through a mutual friend to drive from Chicago to New York City, as they’re both beginning their post-grad lives out east. Over the course of the drive, they argue about various topics, including the central question of the film; can men and women be friends with each other without sex getting in the way? These discussions turn into impassioned arguments, and by the end of the drive they’re at each other’s throats. Once they make their way to New York, they part ways. Already the plot has begun to subvert the expectations of the genre. It’s nowhere near love at first sight. The film doubles down on this subversion, as the two meet again five years later on a flight, and again decide not to be in each other’s lives. Another five years pass, and they run into each other at a bookstore, and the movie fully starts.
Harry and Sally begin spending time with each other as friends, finally rejecting the idea that it’s impossible. They go out to dinners together, they visit museums, and they talk to each other on the phone late at night about Casablanca. They bond as friends by commiserating over their own romantic failings, and unlike many other films of the genre, they’re able to do so without any kind of external pressure. No toxic love triangles; no major ethical dilemmas like that of Nora Ephron’s later film You’ve Got Mail (1998); no jealous exes trying to foil their relationship. The only thing preventing the two lost souls from being together are their own stubborn personalities and ideological differences. One night, Sally learns of her ex’s new engagement, and calls Harry over to her apartment for comfort. That comfort turns into sex, and their innocent friendship is changed forever. They’re unable to reconcile this new development at first, causing them to fight and grow distant. But then. of course, in a move that has now become rom-com 101, Harry delivers a romantic monologue for the ages, and the rest is history.
Talking in Circles
Columbia Pictures
The main accomplishment of When Harry Met Sally… is how it holds the viewer’s attention on mostly dialogue alone. Like the aforementioned Annie Hall, this film features mostly conversations: walk-and-talks on the street, debates in the car, chats over dinner, long phone calls. These conversations provide ample room for discussions of gender politics and clever barbs from Harry. But unlike the Woody Allen film, the script is able to faithfully speak from the female perspective. In the opening car scene, they have their first argument about gender, in which Harry posits that men have a darker interior life than women. He insists that he thinks about death constantly, which will better prepare him for the inevitable. Sally easily pokes holes in his logic, retorting that he’ll spend his whole life worrying instead of actually living. In the now iconic scene at Katz’s deli, the pair discuss a woman’s ability to fake an orgasm. Putting him in his place again, Sally gives her best imitation to show him how hard it is to distinguish the fake from the real. The scene also provides the most iconic joke of the film, when a nearby woman tells her waiter “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The Casablanca scene also arguably provides another conversation in which Sally reveals the simplicity of the male brain. While they watch the film, Harry explains that there are two types of women; high maintenance and low maintenance. He sees Sally as high maintenance because she has a very particular way of ordering her meals – dressings and sauces have to always be on the side. She decides to go to bed, and Harry says that he’s probably too miserable to be able to sleep, so he’ll stay up all night moaning. He proceeds to let out a series of moans, blankly staring off into space. Meanwhile, Sally hangs up the phone, takes a deep breath, and turns out the light. This juxtaposition feels entirely intentional; Sally is able to compose herself and go to bed, while Harry sits there groaning like an emotionally-inept zombie. It’s played for comedic effect, but it also illustrates a deeper point. Sure, Sally might be obsessive about the way she orders salads, but Harry is such an immature wreck that he’d rather whine all night long than simply take a deep breath and get some rest.
A Modern Romance
By having this string of probing conversations before they’re even romantically engaged, the couple is able to reach a solid middle ground before sex is even involved. And in that way, the film still feels impressively modern, even by today’s standards. This device would be expanded upon in Richard Linklater’s masterful Before Sunrise trilogy in the ’90s and 2000s. In a similar fashion, actress Julie Delpy was able to contribute to the script to help better portray the female perspective. Like the Before movies, Sally’s autonomy and ability to vouch for the female perspective in all of these debates serves to contemporize the story in the gender politics of the 21st century. Harry’s somewhat archaic understanding of women is ultimately a key part of his folly. With all of Harry’s fatalism and kvetching, his humor serves as his main appeal throughout the film, not his rock-solid understanding of gender politics. And what ultimately endears him to Sally is how much he’s matured in the decade since they’ve met.
In that fateful first conversation in the car, Sally says she wants to go to New York City so that things will happen to her – so she can meet people and have experiences and be somebody. The ever-sardonic Harry suggests a dark future: “Suppose nothing happens to you. Suppose you live there your whole life and nothing happens; you never meet anybody; you never become anything, and finally you die…” Harry’s snarky exterior suggests that he has it all figured out, and that Sally is the naive one. But the events of the film turn that whole worldview on its head. It’s Harry that has to go through a decade of trials and tribulations to understand how to live.
He has to learn the hard way that his perception of women, and of life in general, is fundamentally flawed. And it’s only once he gets to this point that he fully deserves to love her and to be happy. It’s then that he realizes, as seen in the gorgeous monologue finale, that her idiosyncrasies and divergent perspective are what make her so interesting to him. The couple truly falls in love in these last moments, expertly delaying the satisfaction until the last possible moment. It’s undeniable that romantic comedies have proliferated in the decades since When Harry Met Sally…, but most of them seem to miss the point this film so expertly made more than 30 years ago.
