When Harry Met Sally...

When Harry Met Sally... is a 1989 American film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. It is part of AFI's 10 Top 10 in the category "Romantic Comedy".

Plot

Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) are two college students who meet by chance when she offers to drive Harry from Chicago to New York in her car. During the trip they talk about friendship between people of different sex and their opinions are completely divergent: while Harry is convinced that friendship between a man and a woman is impossible, Sally believes the opposite. Despite this, Sally tells him that they cannot be friends because of her way of thinking and that it is a pity since he would be her first friend in New York. Years pass and their relationship continues.

In New York each one of them lives their life and tries to find a love. One day they meet by chance in a bookstore and spend a long time together philosophizing about life. In the following years they see each other from time to time, more and more frequently. A friendship develops between them that contradicts Harry's philosophy that men and women cannot be friends. The story is cut every few minutes with dialogues from old couples who knew love and how they fell in love, in something similar to therapy. Despite intuiting that both are falling in love, their beliefs, philosophies and attitudes make them reject each other. In the final scenes, Harry's declaration of love will take place in one of the most successful scenes in romantic cinema. Finally it will become clear that they are also one of the therapy couples who recount their long love of 12 years and three months before getting married.

Cast

• Billy Crystal: Harry Burns
• Meg Ryan: Sally Albright
• Carrie Fisher: Marie
• Bruno Kirby: Jess.
• Steven Ford: Joe
• Lisa Jane Persky: Alice
• Michelle Nicastro: Amanda Reese
• Harley Jane Kozak: Helen
• Kevin Rooney: Ira
• Franc Luz: Julian
• Tracy Reiner: Emily
• Kyle Heffner: Gary.
• Gretchen Palmer: Azafata
• Robert Alan Beuth: Passenger

Awards won

• Nomination of the Golden Globe Award 1989 to the best original script (Nora Ephron).
• BAFTA 1990 Award Nomination: the best original script (Nora Ephron).
• ASCAP 1990 Award: the largest box office (Marc Shaiman).
• American Comedy Award 1990: the best comic main actor - Cinema (Billy Crystal) and the best comic main actress - Cinema (Meg Ryan).

The Anthology Scene

Katz's Delicatessen

The poster that still hangs on the table.

The film is known for a scene when the two characters go to have lunch at "Katz's Delicatessen" in Manhattan. They are discussing a man's inability to recognize when a woman is faking an orgasm. Sally claims that men can't tell the difference, and to prove her point, she instantly fakes a boisterous orgasm without caring about the stares of the local crowd. The scene ends as Sally returns to her food and a nearby woman who happens to be watching her (played by Estelle Reiner) asks the waiter, "I'll have / I'll order the same as her." When Estelle Reiner died at age 94 in 2008, The New York Times referred to her as the woman "who delivered one of the funniest and most memorable lines in movie history." This scene was shot over and over again and in it, Ryan demonstrated his ability to fake orgasms for hours. The restaurant "Katz's Delicatessen" A sign still hangs above the table where the scene was filmed that reads: "Where Harry met Sally... we hope you get/ask for what she had/asked for" ("Where Harry met Sally... hope you have what she had!").