Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) on Netflix
Hannah, Holly and Lee are sisters who gather for Thanksgiving. Elliot, Hannah's husband, becomes infatuated with Lee, and her ex-husband Mickey, a hypochondriac, believes he is dying.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.8/1082,205 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Hannah, Holly and Lee grew up in a show business family. Hannah left her acting career to raise her children and is on her second marriage, to Elliot, a financial advisor; everyone brings her their problems. Her first husband, Mickey, writes for a comedy show and believes he is about to die. Holly, an unemployed actress, starts a catering business with her friend April, and at a job they meet David, an architect. Lee lives with Frederick, an older artist who depends on her for contact with the outside world, and Elliot becomes infatuated with her. The sisters' mother, Norma, is an actress still married to their father, Evan.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was originally about a man who fell in love with his wife's sister. Woody Allen then re-read Anna Karenina and found it interesting how its author gets the various stories going, cutting from one story to another: “I loved the idea of experimenting with that.”
- Allen admitted that Hannah was based on Farrow as “a romanticized perception of Mia”: very stable, able to run her career, eight children, good relationships with her sister and her mother. He thought it would be interesting if she had two unstable sisters.
- Farrow wrote that this was the first time she criticized one of Woody's scripts, finding the characters self-indulgent and dissolute and the writing wordy. She says he did not disagree and tried to switch over to an alternative idea, but preproduction was already in progress and they had to proceed.
- Hannah and Her Sisters grossed $40 million in North America and stayed Allen's highest-grossing film for a quarter of a century, until Midnight in Paris surpassed it in 2011.
- Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest won the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress as Elliot and Holly, and Hannah and Her Sisters was the last film to win in both supporting acting categories until The Fighter in 2011.
