“Credevamo di cambiare il mondo invece il mondo ha cambiato a noi.”
Ettore Scola’s 1974 film captures the aching truth at the core of We All Loved Each Other So Much – a story that isn’t just about Italy’s postwar disillusionment, but about all of us who have ever watched our youthful ideals crumble beneath the weight of reality.
The film follows three Resistance fighters – Gianni, Antonio, and Nicola, and thier friend Luciana – whose lives stray dramatically in the decades after World War II. You can see they represent Italy itself:
- Nicola (Napoli/Nocera Inferiore): The fiery communist whose rigid ideals become irrelevant
- Antonio (Napoli/Nocera Inferiore): The humble Southerner left behind by economic progress
- Gianni (Roma): The sellout who trades principles for power
- Luciana (Udine): The eternal caretaker — loved when needed, left when convenient.
Nicola (Nocera Inferiore) embodies the fiery spirit and disillusionment of Italy’s post-war South—a proud communist whose ideals are rendered obsolete by the country’s rapid modernization. His passion for neorealist cinema (like Bicycle Thieves) mirrors his own life: a working-class man who believes in collective struggle, only to find himself stranded by history. The films he loves—raw, hopeful, and rooted in social justice—become ironic counterpoints to his personal irrelevance, as Italy moves toward consumerism and political compromise. Nicola’s tragicomic fate reflects the South’s marginalization, his revolutionary fervor reduced to nostalgic ramblings in a world that no longer listens.
Nicola’s unwavering communist ideals—rooted in justice and equality—become the very force that tears apart his relationships, mirroring the fractures in post-war Italian society. His ideological rigidity, though noble, turns him into a dogmatic figure who cannot adapt as the world changes around him. He lectures friends about class struggle but fails to see their personal struggles; he condemns Gianni’s “sellout” success but offers no real alternative beyond nostalgia for a fading revolution. Even his love for neorealist cinema, once a shared passion among friends, becomes a weapon—he uses it to shame others for abandoning “the cause,” turning art into a cudgel rather than a bridge.
The tragedy of Nicola is that his principles, meant to unite, instead isolate him. His marriage collapses under the weight of his militancy, his friendships wither into debates he can’t win, and by the film’s end, he’s left shouting into the void—a symbol of the Italian Left’s decline, still clinging to purity as the tide of history leaves him behind. His heartbreak isn’t just political; it’s deeply human. He loves his friends, his family, and his ideals, but in the end, the latter consumes the former. When he drunkenly rails against Bicycle Thieves’s “betrayal” of neorealism, it’s not just about film—it’s about his own fear of being erased. His fury masks grief: for the revolution that never came, and the people he pushed away demanding it.
Antonio (Nocera Inferiore) embodies the quiet dignity and overlooked struggles of Italy’s post-war South—a humble hospital porter whose labor is essential yet invisible. Unlike the fiery Nicola or the opportunistic Gianni, Antonio represents the ordinary working class: resilient, kind-hearted, and left behind by Italy’s economic “miracle.” His journey—from hopeful young man to weary middle-aged worker—mirrors the South’s own narrative of migration, displacement, and unfulfilled promises. While others chase ideology or ambition, Antonio’s tragedy is his steadfastness; he does everything “right” (hard work, loyalty, love) but remains stuck in a system that rewards neither his honesty nor his toil. His final reunion with Luciana underscores this bittersweet truth: the South’s humanity endures, even as the country forgets it.
Antonio’s repeated demotions throughout We All Loved Each Other So Much serve as a poignant metaphor for the systemic marginalization of Italy’s working-class South. Despite his diligence and integrity, he is perpetually pushed down the ladder—from aspiring professional to hospital porter—mirroring how Southern Italians were stripped of dignity during the so-called economic “miracle.” The North’s industrial boom was built on Southern labor, yet Southerners like Antonio were denied upward mobility, trapped in roles that demanded their sweat but offered no reward. Each demotion reflects a broader betrayal: Italy’s modernization sacrificed its most vulnerable, reducing them to cogs in a machine that discarded them. Antonio’s quiet acceptance of this fate (he never rebels, only endures) underscores the South’s tragic resignation—a region conditioned to expect little, even as it gives everything.
Gianni begins as an idealist—a young man who shares Nicola’s leftist fire and Antonio’s camaraderie—but unlike them, he trades principles for power, becoming a slick, successful businessman. His arc embodies Italy’s postwar shift from collectivist ideals to individual ambition, mirroring how the economic boom commodified art and politics. Yet Gianni’s “sellout” status is complicated: beneath his cynical exterior, he remains a secret liberal, haunted by the ghosts of his past. He profits from the system but sneers at it; he enjoys privilege but feels its emptiness. In one telling scene, he drunkenly confesses his self-loathing to Antonio, revealing that his rebellion has collapsed into mere aesthetics—he critiques the establishment while dining at its table.
Gianni’s liberalism survives only as nostalgia. He clings to radical chic (hosting avant-garde artists, mocking commercialism) but refuses to act on his beliefs, embodying Italy’s conflicted intelligentsia—left in theory, complicit in practice. His tragedy isn’t that he betrayed his ideals, but that he still believes them, even as he undermines them daily. His character mirrors Italy’s PCI intellectuals who critiqued capitalism while enjoying bourgeois comforts. His final-act existential crisis reveals the tragedy of his generation—he’s too self-aware to enjoy his wealth, too comfortable to renounce it. The ultimate sellout isn’t some cartoon villain, but a man who shrugs, “What could I do?” as he profits from the system.
Luciana (Udine) is the elusive promise of Italy’s rebirth—a small-town beauty who carries the hopes and contradictions of a nation in flux. Hailing from the northeastern periphery of Udine, she arrives in Rome like so many postwar migrants, her provincial roots belying a sharp wit and unspoken yearning for more. When she auditions for a role in La Dolce Vita, the moment crystallizes her tragedy: she’s exactly the vibrant, modern woman the new Italy claims to celebrate, yet the system (like the men in her life) only wants her as decoration. Her Udine origins haunt her—not as shame, but as a reminder of the authentic self that gets smoothed away in the capital’s glamour machine. Luciana isn’t just desired; she’s symbolically consumed: by Gianni’s bourgeois fantasies, by Antonio’s nostalgic devotion, by Fellini’s camera itself. In a film about men’s failures, she’s the collateral damage—the postwar Italy that could’ve been, had the miracle been meant for anyone but the already powerful.