sevisan
Ettore Scola films were always sentimental, pretentious and self-important, full of laborious gimmicks, big themes and immortal phrases. The ambitions were huge (remember "The night of Varennes", "The terrace", "The family", etc.). Sadly, the achievements were mediocre and inversely proportional to the ambitions. Sometimes, only the actors were bearable and help a little (here Manfredi and Sandrelli, Loren and Mastroianni in "Una giornata particolare").In "C'eravamo tanto amati" we have also big themes, but Risi in "Vita difficile" did first and better. Immortal phrases: "We wanted to change life, but life changed us". Stereotypes: the leftist becomes corrupt and capitalist, the money bring no happiness, the idealist movie critic is too impulsive, etc. Gimmicks: the actors talk to the camera and think aloud, colour and b.w. alternates. Besides, the homages to the Italian cinema are crude and obvious. Scola seems to be blackmailing us: "If you don't like my movie, you don't like Fellini, Antonioni and De Sica".I saw this movie many years ago and didn't remember it. I just got today the DVD via Amazon, I have seen 90 min. of the film and I have thrown the DVD to the wastepaper basket
Gerald A. DeLuca
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.
Daniel Wiener
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.
rosebud6
Such a "the way we were" on the Italian way in this film of early 70's. The film shows a journey: a journey of three friends and a woman through dreams and defeats, from post-war period to italian economic miracle (during the sixties)."We would like to change the world, but the world has changed us" tells one of the protagonists. And that's all....!
AD
