They All Laughed (1981, Peter Bogdanovich) (Patreon)

63/100

Ambitiously juggles multiple tones, with each romantic pairing in its own register: Hepburn and Gazzara are doing middle-aged wistful; Ritter performs his standard klutzy slapstick in pursuit of another Bogdanovich shiksa goddess; Hansen and Camp sort of float around in '30s mode, with the former as a prototypical tough cookie and the latter acing pure screwball. Can't say that the combination really gels, but each individual component has its charms. Bogdanovich gets in his own way by making the first act needlessly confusing—it takes roughly half an hour to grasp that these guys are all private dicks working for the same agency, and that they're pursuing totally unrelated cases. All we need to know is "falls for woman he was hired to tail" (x 2), which comes across very early but gets muddied by irrelevant intimations of intrigue. Not very classical, I must say, as the studio system was generally a model of narrative efficiency. (To be fair, They All Laughed's near-silent opening was reportedly inspired by the comparatively shaggy Rio Bravo. Hawks' film was adapted from a short story, though, and sticks to a single, immediately comprehensible storyline.) Had a much better time once it finally became clear that I needn't concern myself with why anyone's being investigated in the first place. Though there are still aspects that make no sense to me, e.g. hiring an agency to spy on your wife and then having the head of said agency and the specific P.I. who'll be following your wife meet you at the helipad so that you can formally introduce her to both of them. Even assuming a cover story, why the fuck would somebody ever toss in that additional risk? (To facilitate a silent opening, I guess.)

Mostly, I come to praise Colleen Camp, who'd never previously made any real impression on me but grabbed my attention here before I'd even grasped that she was among the principal cast. Cristy's introduction is a doozy, as she grins and flirts her way through most of a country song before catching sight of her cheatin' heartthrob and shifting to a scowl without otherwise altering her energy level one iota. (Because the film features almost nonstop music—even a brief scene in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant has the workers blasting a Chinese-language song in the background—I initially mistook this performance for mere color.) Camp's heavily stylized intensity reminds me of (though it precedes by nearly a decade) Meg Ryan's second Joe Versus the Volcano character, Angelica Graynamore; the two share a nearly psychotic directness and self-assurance (tinged with insecurity in both cases), and are a hoot to watch even though they're generally an order of magnitude more cartoonish than their immediate surroundings. The "touch assist" business (something that Camp had actually done to Bogdanovich, he claims) is so hilarious that it's kind of a bummer when the movie finds another fixation for Cristy and returns Charles to the beautiful but rather boring (sorry, Peter; R.I.P. both of you) Dolores. Hepburn and Gazzara, with the built-in pathos of advancing years plus their iconic stature, are a pleasure to spend time with, though there's not all that much to the relationship and I confess to secretly rooting for "Sam" and her amused indifference. A great film, a solid film and a clunker jumbled together; I'll just forget the parts that whiff.