They All Laughed - Significance

Significance

They All Laughed was the last theatrical film in which Audrey Hepburn played a lead role (she would later star in a made-for-TV film entitled Love Among Thieves and later play a cameo role in Always). According to an interview conducted by Wes Anderson in the DVD features for the film, director Peter Bogdanovich claims Hepburn and Ben Gazzara fell in love and had an affair while shooting Bloodline (1979). Though the affair was short-lived, it inspired the characters they would each play in They All Laughed.

Dorothy Stratten was murdered before the film's release.

Along with Heaven's Gate, Cruising, and One from the Heart, They All Laughed is generally regarded as the end of the New Hollywood period, and the director-driven studio films of the 1970s. Since the very public failures of these four films, Hollywood studios have never again allowed directors to control the films that they finance.

In recent years the film has experienced a level of positive reappraisal, with the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson now praising the film. The movie was released to VHS on January 31, 1995; HBO Home Video released the film to DVD (as a 25th Anniversary Edition) on October 17, 2006.