Ettore Scola was the youngest of the group of screenwriters whose wit fueled the golden age of Italian comedy. But Scola's own directorial efforts were by far the most intelligent and artistically mature of the "comedies," bringing to a close the golden age in their reflexive mixture of sorrow and self-parody. In We All Loved Each Other So Much, as Elliott Stein writes, Scola "takes stock of his generation. This sad, noble, and lovely film covers thirty years in the lives of three friends-ex-partisans who had fought against the Germans-and the loss of their ideals, the frittering away of love and friendship during the years of prosperity. It is also subtextually (one of the three is a film critic) a dirge for the death of neorealism. The film is dedicated to De Sica, who appears in it and who died while it was in postproduction."