Nos amábamos tanto

This is a beautiful film about friendship and nostalgia, but above all about loving cinema. To me, this film defines "cinephilia". Cinema and the protagonists' lives are cleverly interwoven. The fleeting images of film, capturing a moment and then disappearing, only to linger in the memory, can be seen as a metaphor for the past that can not be recaptured, a past when we were young and happy and confident and the world was ours. When the credits roll, I feel this strange mixture of happiness and sadness. Oh, how I wish...

Director Ettore Scola weaves a sensitive comedy-drama about the friendship of three men and the one woman each has loved. The men meet each other near the end of the Nazi occupation of Italy. As the next thirty years pass they remain friends although their lives take very different paths and become tinged with sadness and regret. The woman who pops in and out of their lives is Luciana (Stefania Sandrelli), an aspiring actress whose career peaks when she is cast as an extra in a Fellini movie. The three perennial friends are played by Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi and Stefano Satta Flores. Veteran actor Aldo Fabrizi (the priest in OPEN CITY) does a remarkable turn as a powerful industrialist who is as grotesquely unlikeable as he is grotesquely corpulent. Film buffs will enjoy the way Scola has cleverly included footage of DeSica's THE BICYCLE THIEF along with scenes of De Sica explicating that famous movie of his. They will also enjoy a funny re-creation of the filming of the Trevi fountain scene from LA DOLCE VITA, complete with Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini. This is a very beautiful film about how individuals and society change over the years while friendship, "amicizia", remains an enduring value.

I saw this film as a 20 year old when it just came out in the 70ies and I was fascinated by its vision, humor and tragedy. Now I saw it again, more than 25 years later. Living so to speak at the other end of the plot (the story begins when the four protagonists are around 20 and it ends in their late 40ies) it does not look worn out a bit. The way life constructs and destroys friendship has not been mirrored more intensely in any other film I've ever seen.

"We All Loved Each Other So Much" (Italian, 1974): A film by Ettore Scola. We follow three men-friends through 30 years - weaving in and out of each others their lives, alone or in various combinations, with one particular woman. They met as "brothers in war" during the Italian Resistance of WWII. With eventual peace, each traveled their own paths, crossing and remeeting every so often. The b/w photography is beautiful, the scoring perhaps a little heavy-handed (but considering the time – 1974 – downright subtle), the period "looks" seems accurate enough, and the acting by all involved is good. I enjoyed some of the film's devices, such as all the actors freezing in position and the one "in thought" getting a spotlight, the occasional near-repeat of a scene/incident, the actors sometimes speaking directly to you, and other breaks with the "reality" of a film. No doubt Woody Allen saw this work before his making "Annie Hall". You might also think of this film as a more somber, sophisticated version of "The Big Chill" with fewer main characters and more internal assessment.

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.