Sightlines · reception
How We All Loved Each Other So Much was received
1974 · Ettore Scola · We All Loved Each Other So Much on Sightlines
The arc
A smash in Italy on release — it took the Golden Prize at the 1975 Moscow film festival — but it traveled 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.
Did you know? Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni appear as themselves, restaging the shooting of La Dolce Vita's Trevi Fountain scene — and the film is dedicated to Vittorio De Sica, who died shortly after completing his part in it.
Named by the director
- 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 honoring it explicitly.