Description: They All Laughed is less a comedy than an extended love letter—there’s a rambling, awkward tone to the film, and in places it’s so unabashedly personal that certain viewers may flinch from the self-exposure. Ritter’s character is openly a Bogdanovich surrogate—he even wears the director’s trademark horn-rimmed glasses, and he helps Stratten escape an overbearing, jealous husband. The romance between Hepburn and Gazzara is rooted in their real-life affair, and the regret felt by Hepburn’s character references her own status as an aging star. And though the humor in the film is squarely in the neo-screwball style of What’s Up Doc—lightning-quick dialogue, pratfalls, double-takes, blink-and-you-missed it innuendo—They All Laughed, with its sudden shifts in tone and lack of conventional narrative, moves that style into the realm of the European art film.Read More »
