Produced in 1974, 'C'eravamo tanto amati' (The English title is 'We All Loved Each Other So Much') was for Ettore Scola his first highly successful film, that also brought him international recognition. Many remarkable movies were to follow, but this bittersweet saga of Italy's first 30 years after World War II remains one of his best films. Scola can be considered the last of the great directors of the glory period of Italian cinema, although he was decades younger than De Sica, Visconti or Rossellini, and about ten years younger than Fellini and Pasolini. Through the epic force, the political commitment and the perfect mastery of the means of cinematic expression, and also because of the explicit homage paid to the masters and colleagues De Sica and Fellini, 'C'eravamo tanto amati' can be looked at as a beautiful period finale. At the same time its Italian comedy style makes this film a light (in the good sense of the word) and enjoyable cinematic experience.
The action of the film begins in 1944, when three friends, three heroes in the cinematic sense but also in their real life, descend victorious from the mountains in which they had fought as partisans against the fascists. Their paths in life are separated, but they will intersect several times and the film captures precisely these encounters spread in time over the next three decades. Giani (Vittorio Gassman) becomes a lawyer and defender in some not very clean cases, makes a convenient marriage that enriches him and becomes a building magnate. Antonio (Nino Manfredi), a left-wing intellectual and a passionate of cinema, refuses to compromise, leaves his wife and son as well as teaching in a small provincial town to become a film journalist in Rome. Antonio (Stefano Satta Flores) is a paramedic in the hospital and leads a modest existence illuminated only by the love for the beautiful actress Luciana (Stefania Sandrelli) that in fact all three men will fall in love with at one time or another in the story. So we are dealing with a capitalist, an intellectual and a proletarian, plus a muse. The fates of the four and their encounters are traced over thirty years, with their meanders and conflicts, and with their intersections with the history of Italian film that lives at the same time its golden age (Frederico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Marcelo Mastroianni contribute with cameo appearances in the film).
Half of 'C'eravamo tanto amati' is filmed in black and white and the other half in color in parallel with the film transition that took place in the history of the film during the story. The acting interpretations are all remarkable. To the quartet of heroes I mentioned I would add the character of Gianni's father-in-law played by Aldo Fabrizi, a formidable role of composition. The accessible Italian-style comedy style makes the film enjoyable to watch, while the insertions of elements borrowed from theatre (the heroes addressing the audience as if from the stage) or from the 'cinematic kitchen' (repeated takes or stop-frames) make watching the film interesting for more experimental cinema enthusiasts as well. Ettore Scola was one of the directors who knew how to combine inventiveness, accessibility and narrative talent. The disappointment of the heroes is that of a generation that not only dreamed of a better world but also fought for it, but for which the hour of balance is also the hour of disappointment. A story that seems to repeat itself generation after generation.
