We All Loved Each Other So Much · reception & legacy

How We All Loved Each Other So Much has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A smash in Italy on release — it took the Golden Prize at the 1975 Moscow film festival — but it travelled slowly abroad; today it's widely held up as Scola's masterpiece alongside A Special Day and the great summing-up of thirty years of Italian film and politics.

What's debated

The perennial fan gripe: how is the film that lovingly quotes De Sica, Fellini and Antonioni still less famous internationally than any of the films it quotes — with Scola forever nominated as Italy's most underrated master.

Its footprint

Its signature line — 'We wanted to change the world, but the world changed us' — became a stock phrase in Italy for disillusioned idealism, quoted far beyond cinephile circles, and the title itself is used as shorthand for a whole generation's nostalgia.

Where it stands

A cornerstone of commedia all'italiana and a 'you must see this' rite of passage for anyone going deep on Italian cinema — beloved on Letterboxd by those who find it, and constantly evangelised as underseen.

Named by the director

Influences Ettore Scola has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Vittorio De Sica — Scola dedicated the film on-screen to De Sica, framing it as an open homage to the neorealist master who also appears in it.
• Bicycle Thieves (1948) — Scola built the film around De Sica's classic as the touchstone of the characters' (and Italy's) postwar hopes, discussing and honouring it explicitly.