When Harry Met Sally... (1989) | |
The
Story (continued)
A third older couple sit on the love-seat and describe the convoluted path to their successful second marriage after their first marriage of three years ended in a five year-long divorce: (It is actually his fourth attempt at marriage after two other divorces.)
FIVE YEARS LATER Sally is seated at a New York restaurant table with two other women who are her friends and confidants: Marie (Carrie Fisher), who regularly dates married men without success, and Alice (Lisa Jane Persky). Sally has just broken up with Joe after "growing apart for quite a while."
To assist her best friend, Marie takes out her Rolodex index of available men, but Sally wants to wait until she is over her "mourning period":
Marie doesn't want Sally to wait too long, or she will miss her opportunity: "I'm saying that the right man for you might be out there right now and if you don't grab him, someone else will, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that someone else is married to your husband." At a New York Giants professional football game (in between waves passing through the crowd), Harry despondently tells friend Jess (Bruce 'Bruno' Kirby), his confidant, that his marriage to Helen is dissolving:
As a writer, Jess explains how that was a very 'harsh' comment to be told. Harry explains how he found out that his wife had planned to move out all along - at least a week earlier, because she had hired movers (one of whom had a T-shirt emblazoned with: "Don't F--K with Mr. Zero") who had been notified, but he wasn't told - because she didn't want to ruin his birthday:
Harry's wife is moving out - and the pretense of her subleting someone's else's apartment for a trial separation was a lie, according to Harry. "She's in love with somebody else, some tax attorney. She moved in with him." Disillusioned and cynical about his marriage, Harry feels he's been used and humiliated:
Harry and Sally meet again, their third encounter. This time, they cross paths in the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore - he is staring at her from the Personal Growth section, while nearby she is conversing with Marie (who quickly gives them room to talk by exiting down the stairs), and grasping a book titled Smart Women Foolish Choices: Finding the Right Men, Avoiding the Wrong Ones. It has been ten years since their overnight drive from Chicago to New York. After learning that she has broken up with Joe, and that he is in the midst of a divorce to Helen [that's presumably the reason he is browsing in the 'Personal Growth' section'], the two decide to have coffee together in a restaurant and talk about their ill-fated relationships. There, she discusses her lack of commitment to Joe, and how the issue of sex is eliminated when a couple gets married:
As they walk along the park, their relationship has matured. "It Had to Be You" plays softly on a piano, and they discuss their first meeting:
Even though both realize the potential dangers of "becoming friends," Sally asks Harry if he would like to have dinner with her sometime. Harry quips:
A fourth interlude shows an elderly couple (talking over and finishing each other's lines with similar comments) who remember how they were both born in the same hospital in 1921, seven days apart, and grew up one block away from each other. They both lived in tenements on the Lower East Side on Delancey Street, and later moved to the Bronx, where they would ride the same elevator up to work but never met. But they did meet in an elevator in the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago while visiting family. The man remembers: "I rode up nine extra floors just to keep talking to her." The next sequence presents a montage of images while Harry and Sally talk on the phone (in voice-over) in late-night marathon conversations. At work, Harry stares at his toy bird dunking its beak into a glass of water; Sally is also busy at a computer work terminal and a fussy eater as she serves herself from a supermarket salad bar; a depressed and pathetic-looking Harry in his vacant apartment tosses playing cards into a bowl about ten feet away; and Sally vigorously takes a tap-dancing class. In a Chinese restaurant, Sally and Harry order dinner together, and later, he stands impatiently behind her as she mails letters at a mailbox on the street. Before the split-screen scene of their watching the last scene of Casablanca (1942), the voice-over dialogue at the start of that scene (but during the previous montage of images) is about how they each identify with the characters in the film, as they did years earlier during their long road-trip. Sally denies ever having said that she preferred the practical choice - Victor Laszlo over Rick. Harry maturely yields to Sally's insistence, even though his memory is correct:
In a split-screen effect, as both watch the film together on television - while reclining in bed in their own apartments, but they maintain a conversation about the film on the phone:
Harry and Sally spend more and more time together and their friendship blossoms. In one sequence, they share their deepest fantasies amidst walks. Harry's insecurities are reflected in a recurring dream in which his love-making is judged in the Olympics. "My mother, disguised as an East German judge gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount." Sally describes an embarrassing sexual fantasy she has had since puberty - a "faceless guy" rips off her clothes:
After each have horrible dating experiences, they discuss how "uncomfortable" it is to "get out there." Although Sally encourages Harry with advice: "The first date back is always the toughest," she describes how bad her "dream date" really was:
Harry relates how his nice date was completely humorless, not laughing at his joke about eating in an Ethiopian restaurant and being awkwardly unable to relate to her. They offer mutual support to each other after traumatic dating:
Harry provides the punchline of the scene - even though his date was terrible, he admits: "Oh, I went to bed with her" - to Sally's stunned amazement! [His non-chalant comment demonstrates how they, and many men and women, view sex and relationships so differently.] The next discussion that Harry has with Jess during baseball hitting practice provides further commentary on male/female relationships. Harry explains to Jess during baseball hitting practice about the uniqueness of his platonic relationship with Sally - that he enjoys being with Sally and that he finds her attractive, but doesn't sleep with her:
In the justly-famous restaurant-deli scene [filmed in New York's world famous Katz's Deli], commitment-shy Harry describes how he can "just get up out of bed and leave" after sex by any number of fake excuses: "I say I have an early meeting, an early haircut, an early squash game." Sally is affronted by his insensitivity and sexist attitudes:
Harry confidently believes his sexual prowess satisfies his female partners and brings them to orgasm, until Sally explains how "most women, at one time or another, have faked it." Harry doesn't believe that he has been fooled because he 'knows':
Sally looks at Harry seductively, and begins to illustrate, in the middle of the busy restaurant, how easily women can convincingly fake an orgasm. With a loud and long display of pants, groans, gasps, hair rufflings, caresses, table poundings, and ecstatic releases, she yells: "Yes, Yes, YES! YES! YES!" The entire restaurant is quieted down and attentive to her realistic act. When she is finished with her demonstration, she calmly composes herself, picks up her fork and resumes eating. This is followed by the film's funniest punchline, delivered by another customer (Estelle Reiner - director Rob Reiner's mother) who tells the waitress, "I'll have what she's having" - referring to the meal ordered by Sally. [This scene, very out of character for the normally-repressed and introverted Sally, was filmed late in the production, and was to be used principally as the film's trailer - but then it became the integral, most-remembered scene.] It is Christmas time in New York City with a montage of beautiful images - a horse-drawn carriage pulling people through Central Park, people bundled up walking through the snow or cross-country skiing, the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree and ice skating rink, an animated store window display, children tobagganing and sledding down a hill, tree and light decorated streets, and the outdoor Wollman ice skating rink. Sally negotiates the price for a Christmas tree at a lot and she and Harry carry it to his place. It is New Years' Eve - a champagne bottle is popped open at a party, and Sally and Harry are dancing and dipping together:
As they turn, their expressions show how their platonic feelings are becoming more romantic. After a loud countdown to the New Year, they pause and stare awkwardly at each other, and then give each other a quick peck and a hug. The camera freezes on their embrace - and fades to black. They still insist on keeping their deep friendship and romance mutually exclusive: A fifth couple presents a testimonial about their first meeting and their instinctive love for each other:
Both Sally and Harry plan to be matchmakers and set up blind dates for each other. They want to introduce each other to their best friends - Marie and Jess - in a West Broadway restaurant, to help jump-start new relationships with different people:
On their way to the restaurant, Harry and Jess debate the age-old issue of personality vs. attractiveness:
Although Jess and Sally, and Marie and Harry are arranged to sit together as couples at the four-person table, they engage in awkward, obviously incompatible conversations with their respective dates. However, both Marie and Jess suddenly become involved with each other after Marie quotes a line from a magazine article he wrote: "Restaurants are to people in the eighties what theater was to people in the sixties." Jess is astonished: "Nobody has ever quoted me back to me before." After the meal, Marie tells Sally how "comfortable" and interested she is in going out with her date. Sally is overly protective of Harry: "I'm just worried about Harry. He's very sensitive, he's going through a rough period, and I-I just don't want you to reject him right now." Harry and Jess have an identical conversation, with Jess asking Harry's permission to call Marie. Harry is concerned about Sally's psyche: "Sally's very vulnerable right now. I mean, you can call Marie, it's fine, but just, like, wait a week or so, you know? Don't make any moves tonight." Hitting it off immediately, both Jess and Marie grab a cab together, leaving the boring Harry and Sally standing together on the street - without regrets for abandoning them. |