While
not the finest work of either Cary Grant or Sophia Loren, I’ve always
found HOUSEBOAT ($25) to be a rather charming romantic comedy. HOUSEBOAT
features a rather sitcom-like plot, which works fairly well because of the
underlying chemistry between Grant and Loren, which had a real life
emotional basis. In HOUSEBOAT, Grant portrays the recently widowed
Tom Winters, who had let his government job estrange him from his wife and
children. Hoping to make up for past mistakes, Tom takes custody of his
three children and moves them into his Washington DC apartment.
Unfortunately,
Tom’s apartment is too small and he is ill prepared to care for the
children on his own. The near impossibility of hiring a maid in Washington
DC leads Tom to offer the position of maid/nanny to Cinzia Zaccardi
(Loren), the beautiful young Italian woman, whom brings home Tom’s son
after the child runs away. Moving to a larger place in the country doesn’t
go exactly as planned, with father, children and new maid finding
themselves living onboard a dilapidated houseboat on the Potomac. While
the new living arrangements do bring Tom and his children closer together,
it also has the added benefit of stirring up a romantic attraction between
employer and maid. The cast of HOUSEBOAT also includes Martha Hyer,
Harry Guardino, Eduardo Ciannelli, Murray Hamilton, Mimi Gibson, Paul
Petersen and Charles Herbert.
Paramount
Home Entertainment has made HOUSEBOAT available on DVD in a 1.78:1
wide screen presentation that features the anamorphic enhancement for 16:9
displays. Although HOUSEBOAT was shot in the VistaVision process,
this movie isn’t a prime example of how good the format that toted Motion
Picture High Fidelity could look. There is a lot of rear screen
projection work in the film that is of rather poor quality, as well as
instances where the cinematography is heavily filtered, which renders the
image just plain soft. However, much of the film looks quite nice,
displaying a relatively sharp picture and a more than decent level of
detail. Colors are generally quite vibrant and recreate the look of an IB
Technicolor print quite nicely. Flesh tones have the kind of naturalness
that can only be attributed to Max Factor, but are otherwise pleasing. All
of the hues are rendered without chroma noise or smearing. Blacks appear
quite respectable, but are not always perfect. Whites are clean and crisp
and contrast is usually quite good. The cleanly authored DVD is free from
noticeable digital compression artifacts.
HOUSEBOAT
is presented with a Dolby Digital monaural soundtrack. Although fidelity
is slightly better than what one normally gets from a film of this
vintage, the top and bottom end of the track remains somewhat
shortchanged. Still, Sophia Loren does a bit of singing in the movie,
which actually sounds quite nice. Dialogue is cleanly rendered and is
always completely understandable, except for the Italian language
passages. The majority of the background hiss and surface noise seems to
have been cleaned off the track, so everything sounds just fine with a bit
of amplification. A French language track has also been encoded onto the
DVD, as have English subtitles. The basic interactive menus provide access
to the standard scene selection and set up features, as well as a
theatrical trailer and a still gallery.
As
a fan of Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and HOUSEBOAT, I am glad that the
movie has made its debut on DVD. Paramount has done a nice enough job with
the presentation, and I am sure that other movie buffs will be more than
satisfied with the DVD.
While
not the finest work of either Cary Grant or Sophia Loren, I’ve always
found HOUSEBOAT ($25) to be a rather charming romantic comedy. HOUSEBOAT
features a rather sitcom-like plot, which works fairly well because of the
underlying chemistry between Grant and Loren, which had a real life
emotional basis. In HOUSEBOAT, Grant portrays the recently widowed
Tom Winters, who had let his government job estrange him from his wife and
children. Hoping to make up for past mistakes, Tom takes custody of his
three children and moves them into his Washington DC apartment.
Unfortunately,
Tom’s apartment is too small and he is ill prepared to care for the
children on his own. The near impossibility of hiring a maid in Washington
DC leads Tom to offer the position of maid/nanny to Cinzia Zaccardi
(Loren), the beautiful young Italian woman, whom brings home Tom’s son
after the child runs away. Moving to a larger place in the country doesn’t
go exactly as planned, with father, children and new maid finding
themselves living onboard a dilapidated houseboat on the Potomac. While
the new living arrangements do bring Tom and his children closer together,
it also has the added benefit of stirring up a romantic attraction between
employer and maid. The cast of HOUSEBOAT also includes Martha Hyer,
Harry Guardino, Eduardo Ciannelli, Murray Hamilton, Mimi Gibson, Paul
Petersen and Charles Herbert.
Paramount
Home Entertainment has made HOUSEBOAT available on DVD in a 1.78:1
wide screen presentation that features the anamorphic enhancement for 16:9
displays. Although HOUSEBOAT was shot in the VistaVision process,
this movie isn’t a prime example of how good the format that toted Motion
Picture High Fidelity could look. There is a lot of rear screen
projection work in the film that is of rather poor quality, as well as
instances where the cinematography is heavily filtered, which renders the
image just plain soft. However, much of the film looks quite nice,
displaying a relatively sharp picture and a more than decent level of
detail. Colors are generally quite vibrant and recreate the look of an IB
Technicolor print quite nicely. Flesh tones have the kind of naturalness
that can only be attributed to Max Factor, but are otherwise pleasing. All
of the hues are rendered without chroma noise or smearing. Blacks appear
quite respectable, but are not always perfect. Whites are clean and crisp
and contrast is usually quite good. The cleanly authored DVD is free from
noticeable digital compression artifacts.
HOUSEBOAT
is presented with a Dolby Digital monaural soundtrack. Although fidelity
is slightly better than what one normally gets from a film of this
vintage, the top and bottom end of the track remains somewhat
shortchanged. Still, Sophia Loren does a bit of singing in the movie,
which actually sounds quite nice. Dialogue is cleanly rendered and is
always completely understandable, except for the Italian language
passages. The majority of the background hiss and surface noise seems to
have been cleaned off the track, so everything sounds just fine with a bit
of amplification. A French language track has also been encoded onto the
DVD, as have English subtitles. The basic interactive menus provide access
to the standard scene selection and set up features, as well as a
theatrical trailer and a still gallery.
As
a fan of Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and HOUSEBOAT, I am glad that the
movie has made its debut on DVD. Paramount has done a nice enough job with
the presentation, and I am sure that other movie buffs will be more than
satisfied with the DVD.
