Ettore Scola was the youngest of the group of screenwriters-Age and Scarpelli, Maccari and Zapponi et al-whose wit fueled the golden age of Italian comedy. As Apra and Pistagnesi note in Comedy, Italian Style (1950-1980), "When we remember that (Scola) signed a film like Il mattatore when not yet thirty, we realize that his maturity coincided with the golden age of comedy, whose language and content he helped to rejuvenate." Scola's genius virtually permeated last summer's PFA series devoted to Comedy, Italian Style: with Ruggero Maccari, he was scriptwriter on Il mattatore (1960, Dino Risi), Il sorpasso (1962, Risi), I mostri (1963, Risi), La visita (1963, A. Pietrangeli), and I complessi (1965, Risi), to name only the highlights of our particular series. But Scola's own masterpieces-We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974), and La Terrazza (1980)-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. We All Loved Each Other So Much was the most widely acclaimed internationally of the Italian comedies, and Scola has continued to reach an international audience with Una giornata particolare (A Special Day, 1977), La nuit de Varennes (1982) and Le Bal (1983). Critic Elliott Stein writes: "In C'eravamo tanto amati/We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974) (Scola) takes stock of his generation. This sad, noble, and lovely film covers thirty years in the lives of three friends (Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, Stefano Satta Flores), 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. We All Loved Each Other So Much is a sort of Italian The Big Chill-with a difference. Scola's film summons up real depths of feeling; emotionally, it's an epic."