Ettore Scola
C'eravamo tanto amati

C'eravamo tanto amati is one of the greatest and most important films in Italian cinematography of all time.

It is in the Olympus together with a few others... La strada, Ladri di biciclette, Il sorpasso, I soliti ignoti, Rocco e i suoi fratelli...

It is an extraordinary film from many points of view.

The cast: you don't know where to look. Two giants, Gasmann and Manfredi, a great actor, Stefano Satta Flores, who received less than his real merits. A surprisingly talented Stefania Sandrelli. A Aldo Fabrizi at the end of his race (ma io nun mòro!) who delivers the last swipe of the old lion in the unforgettable portrayal of a rich and greedy Roman real estate mogul. And then Fellini (ho visto tutti i suoi film dottor Rossellini... ah sì? Arrivederci!) Mastroianni, the Trevi fountain, they're shooting the famous scene from La dolce vita...

The story: the film is written by Ettore Scola himself, along with Age and Scarpelli. We are talking about the best in circulation. We are saying that if Italian films were once the top, it was also because they were divinely written, then you just had to "only" film them. 30 years of Italian history, from the end of the Second World War to the mid-70s. Three friends, three partisans, three communists (perhaps). A woman will shuffle the cards, set them against each other and reconnect them, a woman who will belong to everyone and no one.

Cinema within cinema: the film, dedicated to master Vittorio De Sica, pay attention to the closing credits, is rich in quotes, cues, references, and tributes to great Italian cinema. It's like a love letter that never wants to end. We were talking about La dolce vita... imagine, while Antonio (Manfredi) the porter passes by with the ambulance at funtan de trevi, at that moment they are actually shooting that scene... and then the brilliant reference to Pietrangeli from Io la conoscevo bene, the photography, the black tears soaked in makeup streaming down Sandrelli's cheeks... And what about Rischiatutto, yes Mike Bongiorno is there too, and the debate on the real reason that made the child cry in Ladri di biciclette, which after De Sica, in archival footage, says it... he cries because in his pocket we put some cigarette butts... "did you see? You were right!!!".

But that's not all, the film is magnificent also from a directorial standpoint, from the perfect game of flashbacks, to the past that is remembered, the war, the youth. And when we go back, the film turns black and white... Then there are moments of meta-cinema like when Manfredi, on a whim, speaks into the camera, talking to us in a confidential way and in real-time maybe responding to someone else in the film saying something to him and he does it with a naturalness (ease was Nino's additional weapon) that leaves you speechless.

And what about when Scola freezes the actors and the only one who can speak lets us hear his thoughts, what he really wants to say to the other? It's dream-cinema, pure poetry.

It is a film that reeks of Italy and exudes Italy in every single frame, right from the start, already in the opening titles, with the sublime soundtrack by master Trovajoli in a typically Italian piece, film music, gentlemen.

A film strongly characterized for better or worse by an Italian identity that perhaps no longer exists today.

A film that moves nimbly between drama and comedy and Italian history and social commitment and denunciation. A film full of life, seeking answers and condemning without half measures (la nostra generazione ha fatto schifo).

A circular, enveloping film, a carousel with a little horse that goes round and round and on top there's a child laughing... that goes round and round and comes back again and the child is no longer there and the little horse is all peeled, stripped, creaky and you hear nothing anymore, there's no more smell of cotton candy, the lights go out, people go home, the film is over.

La nostra generazione ha fatto schifo.