This is one delicate movie to watch. While the American cinema in 1990 was busy making comedies about nasty, annoying or even adventurous children such as (Problem Child, Look Who's Talking Too, Home Alone), Europe made one movie about the beauty, as well as the magic, of being just a child.
This Italian / French movie is a memorable experience about such a relationship between a little girl and her half crazy grandfather. The matters to love are many; first of all that characterization of the man, played by veteran actor (Vittorio Gassman), being a rich tycoon once who lost his mind; out of money, lying,.. the movie itself doesn't specify, but sure he's an old victim to all the materialism of our modern-day. Now he's a child anew; namely honest, playful and softhearted to a degree that made his granddaughter braver than him. His illness doesn't make him understand a lot of evils around him as the same as any child. The movie, so softly, deals with that dual of the man and his granddaughter as nearly fugitives of all of their world's misunderstanding and hate; or - in a word - all the oldness around them, where no childhood any more unless with children, senile people, and yes.. the crazy ones!
(Tolgo il disturbo) or (I won't disturb you anymore) just disturbs us with the fact that mind has become so impure nowadays, and all what we need is a portion of innocence and maybe craziness to be a human again. Or maybe innocence as truthfulness became craziness nowadays!
There is a collection of unforgettable scenes that range between sheer romance and bitter black comedy; the mendacious TV interview of the psychiatrist, and how his patients refuse his lying on air. The grandfather listens to the charm of life by putting his ear on his granddaughter's head. The granddaughter teaching her grandfather how not to be afraid of thunder by holding his hand. Or how the husband of the lead's daughter searches for his father-in-law by publishing a photo of the latter when he was 40 years younger; so perhaps no one would find him!
I adored the music score; it has a sense of mirth mixed with awful grief in great emotionality. It said everything while being sweet and sour in the same time. It's short piece of music, not an Orchestra work, and rarely present throughout the movie, but can't be worn out with hearing it for countless times (I recorded it from the movie itself, since I have no way to get any soundtrack!). And no wonder, it comes from (Francis Lai) the man who wrote the music of films like A Man and a Woman (1966), and Love Story (1970).
Director (Dino Risi) surrounded the whole thing with halo of simplicity. It's how to assure your position as a moviemaker by no flashy tricks while achieving your message clearly and lovably. The air of the movie is filled of smooth and sad feelings. It takes a certain smartness in doing hard things while looking eventually simple.
I just saw that the role of (Elliott Gould) as (Alcide) was a bit inserted; maybe to get a distribution in USA anyway! Although that character of the sidekick, who's tired of meeting lying or not finding real love, was sort of interesting, but I thought that that wonderful actor was wasted through it, or at least miscast.
Finally, from time to time, we need to be disturbed by movies like this. It teaches us that we miss ourselves into greedy and wild world, expelling any good nature. I believe this is a story of an old man who lived for all of his life as crazy, and now he's getting sane, wanting nothing but to give love and receive love. However, who said that love is that available in the true madness which we live?!
