New York's Odyssey Detective Agency is hired by two different clients to follow two women suspected of infidelity. Ladies' man John Russo trails Angela Niotes, the elegant wife of a wealthy Italian industrialist, while Charles Rutledge and Arthur Brodsky follow Dolores Martin, the beautiful young wife of a jealous husband. Their respective cases are complicated when John falls for Angela, and Charles falls for Dolores.
Audrey Hepburn Ben Gazzara Patti Hansen John Ritter Dorothy Stratten Blaine Novak Linda MacEwen George Morfogen Colleen Camp Sean Hepburn Ferrer Glenn Scarpelli Vassili Lambrinos Antonia Bogdanovich Sashy Bogdanovich Sheila Stodden Lisa Dunsheath Joyce Hyser Elizabeth Peña Riccardo Bertoni Shawn Casey Peter Bogdanovich Kimberly Dorsey Robert V. Girolami Willow Hale David Hausman Debra Lass Jon Levine Alex McArthur Marianne Muellerleile Show All…
Et tout le monde riait, ...e tutti risero, Muito Riso e Muita Alegria, Todos rieron, Sie haben alle gelacht, Ei toți au râs, Все они смеялись, Всички се смееха, És mindenki nevetett, 哄堂大笑, Вони всі сміялися, Tothom va riure
Italy
Venice Film Festival
USAPG
BrazilLivre
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Portugal
Brazil
Germany
Italy
Portugal
USA
Few moving pictures feel so pure of heart, while every note, comic or tender, feels tuned to perfection.
A bittersweet comedy about moving around while watching and fantasizing. The detective business is of course a thinly veiled metaphor for cinephilia and give it to Bogdanovich to make it at same time idealized and creepy. There's a wistful quality for the action, the way it is both takes place in fantasy New York and live on the strengths of its location shooting. It plays at same time as the closest an American film come to Demy and something like benign De Palma. One dreams of older great movies, but arrive into something else. The acting is terrific throughout (particularly Gazarra who is as good in his two PB movies as in his three Cassavetes ones). with Bogdanovich downplaying dialogue for a choreography of stolen glaces. It is all a big marvelous dream that everyone involved seems aware it is not build to last. Films end, after all.
A movie made as a love letter to Manhattan. I think the director just wanted to showcase the city. I really don't understand the point of this movie. The script is garbage. Everything is so random and confusing. We don't get an intro as to who's who and what they're doing until 45 min in and even then I still didn't know what was happening.
A story of private eyes who walk around the city following woman and who occasionally roller skate. But nothing really happens. Audrey Hepburn is so classy and gorge. John Ritter is doing his thing but needed more screen time. RIP to the beautiful Dorothy Stratten, super tragic and sad what happened to her.
Its entertaining as a time capsule and city aesthetic but a total non story. Good 80s people watching and soundtrack. Style over substance. Nobody laughed though.
The city is a wonderful stage to allow bodies to attract. One of the most beautiful romances because everything exists in the moment, no past or future beyond what the characters are willing to imagine.
A film whose various plot points are based in real life events that would become tragic, yet the film's effervescent energy pushes all of that out of mind until the melancholy of its final images let reality seep back in. Voyeurism as a series of coy glimpses, screwball filtered through a rough-'n-tumble New Wave prism, with the camera always darting after every turned head and reversing back as watchers and watched enter into a series of pas-de-deux that adds a sense of wistfulness to the mania. This movie moves fast, but measured enough that the collision and reconfiguring of romantic lines until each is sorted out into the ideal partner is not merely zany but a relief, stripped of much of the resistance of screwball partners who don't realize how alike they are. Instead, they are relieved to find a kindred soul, even if some stories end sadder than others. Bogdanovich's endearing pastiches here give way to something approaching grace.
sorry but this is what movies are made for! i want all my rom-coms to feel in motion; everyone going their own speed but running on the same track. so many variations of yearning and giddiness in this, all grounded in the perfect amount of fantasy.
My romantic ideal of cinema, the closest an American has come to making a Jacques Demy film.
“the shades come off at midnight, where you gonna be?”
we made it through another year, folks. looking back, it makes sense to me now that a lot of the films i loved this year were about searching for something, constantly being in movement. i hit a certain peak of restlessness sometime during the past few months, always worried about keeping up, fearing my own expectations. i’ve slowly been returning to myself though — the turning point, i think, being at a q&a with whit stillman, where he talked about patience and openness to being moved. how all experiences are collaborative and fluid. sometimes you end up in the right place at the right time. sometimes someone speaks directly to you, in a crowd full of people.
here’s to another lap around the roller rink. trips, falls, and all. someone will be there to help you get back on your feet, i promise.
xoxo
we see everything while characters look past each other until the film gently reorganizes their mismatched pairings and maybe even their real-life lost love for them.
Cinematic Time Capsule
1981 Marathon - Film #139
”Please, my husband has me followed…”
“Yeah, I know, I’m following you.”
A group of lousy private eye’s find themselves romantically entangled with their work.
Like an inside joke with an undisclosed punchline, Bogdanovich’s game of sexual musical chairs is a bit of a confusing mess that thinks it’s way more witty and fun than it actually is.
Ben Gazzara & Audrey Hepburn are high class all the way, but aren’t given much to do. While John Ritter incorporates plenty of slapstick and Colleen Camp seems to think she’s auditioning for a remake of “His Girl Friday”.
”That boy is very attractive, but I don’t think he understands the language.”
"Cheer up boss, we're gonna get drunk."
At last and too late, PB transcends his cold kneejerk impulse for pastiche and tribute (this, a New York Baisers volés by way of a country-western Demy musical) and comes up with something original, tender, vibrant, sexy, graceful, light, and devastating. A contingency hymn.
They All Laughed was New Hollywood's last hurrah, but at least they went out with a bang. A bang no one heard, it seems, but as I've now seen, it did actually happen.
Peter Bogdanovich is someone I'm starting to familiarize myself with, and two films (Targets) in it's looking a lot like love.
They All Laughed is a bit hard to define, not to mention review. There's a certain element of screwball shenanigans including Ritter's slapstick, there's some caper elements around, there's that special 70s NY feeling that's still lingering even in the beginnings of a new decade, but the most important thing is Bogdanovich's love for his output and the way he just pours his heart into his…
