Why When Harry Met Sally is the greatest romantic comedy ever made

Aside from the great dialogue, impeccable performances, finger-tapping music, and delicious Big Apple cinematography, there’s one genius innovation that made Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron’s 1989 film such a hit.

By the time Harry Connick Jr. is singing at the end of When Harry Met Sally…, we all know that the film’s title characters are perfect for each other. But what else do we know about them? The answer is: not much. We know that Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) takes an hour and a half to order a sandwich, and that Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) rates Mallomars as “the greatest cookie ever,” but we don’t know if they have any brothers or sisters, for example, or if their parents are alive. We don’t know whether they were bullied at school, whether they enjoy their jobs, or what their plans are for the future. We do not know where they stand on contemporary political issues. However, these omissions are one of the main reasons why When Harry Met Sally… is still viewed as one of the best romantic comedies of all time, more than 35 years after its 1989 release.

There are plenty of other reasons, from the great dialogue to the flawless performances, from the finger-tapping music to the delicious Big Apple cinematography. But the film’s real innovation is the way its director, Rob Reiner, and screenwriter, Nora Ephron, strip away the biographical details of the characters, just as they remove all the obstacles to their path to happiness. Everything was removed from the film except Harry and Sally’s attitudes toward love, sex, friendship, and each other. The result is a romantic comedy that is pure at its core: it has romance, it has comedy, and nothing else.

It’s a simple tactic, with such an exhilarating result, that it’s easy to forget how bold and unusual it was. But it’s not easy to think of a romantic comedy with the same undiluted purity. Take a look at those being made around the same time, and you’ll see a fire chief with an inhumanly long nose (Roxanne), a stockbroker who steals her boss’s identity (Working Girl), a widow smitten with her fiancé’s angry brother (Moonstruck), and a wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant in love with a mermaid (Splash). Take a look at the book When Harry Met Sally… and you’ll see some universal truths about singleness and falling in love. It is so dedicated to male-female relationships, to the exclusion of everything else, that its working title was simply Boy Meets Girl.