Allen also stars in the film, along with Mia Farrow as Hannah, Michael Caine as her husband, and Barbara Hershey and Dianne Wiest as her sisters.
Alongside them, the film features Carrie Fisher, Lloyd Nolan, Maureen O'Sullivan, Max von Sydow, Daniel Stern, John Turturro, Lewis Black (debut), and Julie Kavner.
Hannah and Her Sisters was, for a long time, Allen's biggest box office success, with a North American gross of US$40 million.
The story is told in three main arcs, with most of it occurring during a 24-month period beginning and ending at Thanksgiving parties, held at The Langham, hosted by Hannah, and her husband, Elliot.
Lee finally ends the affair during the second Thanksgiving, explaining that she is finished waiting for him to commit and that she has started dating someone else.
His existential crisis leads to unsatisfying experiments with religious conversion to Catholicism and an interest in Krishna Consciousness.
Ultimately, a suicide attempt leads him to find meaning in his life after unexpectedly viewing the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup in a movie theater.
The revelation that life should be enjoyed, rather than understood, helps to prepare him for a second date with Holly, which this time blossoms into love.
Holly sets aside her script, and instead writes a story inspired by her own life, which Mickey reads and admires greatly, vowing to help her get it produced and leading to their second date.
By the time of the film's third Thanksgiving, Lee has married a literature professor she met while taking random classes at Columbia University.
(in order of appearance) Part of the film's structure and background is borrowed from Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982).
The sudden appearance of Mickey's reflection behind Holly's in the closing scene also parallels the apparition behind Alexander of the Bishop's ghost.
"[3] He was particularly intrigued by the character of Nicholas Levin "who can't seem to find any meaning to life, he's terribly afraid of dying.
[5] She later elaborated: It was my mother's stunned, chill reaction to the script that enabled me to see how he had taken many of the personal circumstances and themes of our lives, and, it seemed, had distorted them into cartoonish characterizations.
It went on to gross $40,084,041 in the United States and Canada (including a re-release the following year), and remains one of the highest-grossing Woody Allen films.
The site's critics consensus reads: "Smart, tender, and funny in equal measure, Hannah and Her Sisters is one of Woody Allen's finest films.
Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, gave the film a highly favorable review, going as far as to say that it "sets new standards for Mr. Allen as well as for all American movie makers".
[21] It was also listed as Allen's finest work in a joint article by The Daily Telegraph film critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, who compared its structure with the works of Anton Chekhov and lauded it as "perhaps the most perfectly assured braiding of comedy and drama in mainstream American film.
It feels like the miraculous sweet spot between all of its filmmaker's many modes and tones – biting without being cruel, profound without seeming sanctimonious, warmly humane without collapsing into goo.
"[22] It was ranked third among Allen's films in a 2016 poll of Time Out contributors, with editor Joshua Rothkopf singling out the character of Holly as "the kind of desperate, flailing Manhattanite that future director-writers would spin entire careers out of".
In 1986, Mad magazine satirized the film as "Henna and Her Sickos" which was written by Debbee Ovitz with art by Mort Drucker.
[25] The cast included, Wilde as Hannah, Rose Byrne as Lee, Uma Thurman as Holly, Michael Sheen as Elliott, Bobby Cannavale as Mickey, and Salman Rushdie as Frederick with Maya Rudolph, Jason Sudeikis and Justin Long filling out the supporting parts.