We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974)

Fantastic!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Blistering performances.

Ettore Scola films were always sentimental, pretentious and self-important, full of laborious gimmicks, big themes and immortal phrases. The ambitions were huge (remember "The night of Varennes", "The terrace", "The family", etc.). Sadly, the achievements were mediocre and inversely proportional to the ambitions. Sometimes, only the actors were bearable and help a little (here Manfredi and Sandrelli, Loren and Mastroianni in "Una giornata particolare").In "C'eravamo tanto amati" we have also big themes, but Risi in "Vita difficile" did first and better. Immortal phrases: "We wanted to change life, but life changed us". Stereotypes: the leftist becomes corrupt and capitalist, the money bring no happiness, the idealist movie critic is too impulsive, etc. Gimmicks: the actors talk to the camera and think aloud, colour and b.w. alternates. Besides, the homages to the Italian cinema are crude and obvious. Scola seems to be blackmailing us: "If you don't like my movie, you don't like Fellini, Antonioni and De Sica".I saw this movie many years ago and didn't remember it. I just got today the DVD via Amazon, I have seen 90 min. of the film and I have thrown the DVD to the wastepaper basket

I saw this movie many years ago on television. The imagery and the relationship amongst the characters was so interesting and involving I couldn't blink. This story evolves around the friendship of three men and a woman they each have loved. Life will teach us and destroy us, but our friendship will always endure.The three Italian men became friends during WWII. Although they remained friends they each took different career interests which led them to grow apart only to have their reunions spawn occasionally over the years. The woman friend is somewhat loose and not regarded favorably as a quality person, but rather as a tramp.The theme here is time. Time determines how life will have formed their personalities, goals and dreams. Unfortunately all their dreams fall short and facing each other afterward is anticlimactic and depressing.By the end we are left with a feeling of sadness, cynicism, but a true account of how friendship and familial relationships come and fade. Life will be most cruel to the ones who are eager and sincere and the others will float through easily and unaffectedly.This is a cinematic masterpiece. It's a shame no one has revived it yet.

My only all-time favorite, ever since 1979 in Tuschinski. The theme is simple, strong and light, and does not evoke grand historical events but a mere musing on one's own growing up. The use of black/white and sepia flashbacks, changing into into present day colors at a sidewalk drawing, give extra depth to past and present with only a few stroke of the brush. Extra attention has been devoted to sounds and melody: the voices of the main characters reinforce the roles. The melody theme is played simply on one trumpet and echoes the simplicity of the theme. The memory of the move does not fade even after 25 years. I guess it was intended to do so. A very natural composition.

When nostalgia meets subtle humor, nonchalance and Italian "bigmouth"-way of expressing ideas, there's where you can find "C'eravamo tanto amati". The emotion is always there, but the smile is never far away.Italian filmmakers (not all, but Scola is definitely one of them)have this lovely way to make sad things seem quite funny (apart of one or two very touching scenes), and funny things a bit melancholic. This film talks to your heart. It appeals to a wide range of emotions, each of them never alone but delicately mixed with others. This story about love, friendship, political involvement, and their evolution (dilution?) through the years could have easily lost itself in drama and self-pity, or in first-degree optimism, which are the two great traps which lots of directors fall in. But Scola is far, far above that. This film is life as it goes. Special mentions to the scenes between Vittorio Gassmann and Giovanna Ralli.