Product: Houseboat [VHS] (1958)
Rating: 5.0
Romance on the river
The Houseboat is a very romantic, light-hearted movie. It is a little gem with Cary Grant playing his usual role of a debonaire bachelor with a little twist - this time he's a widower, a single father of three young children who suddenly decides that the children have to live with him. Suffice it to say that he's had very little previous experience raising his kids - and it shows! Another improbable twist - enter the rebellious daughter of an Italian music conductor as a nanny (a very young and very exotic Sophia Loren) - and the fun begins. The family and the nanny are planning to move to a guest house not far from the family of his late wife, but they need to relocate it to another place nearby and the guest house is getting ruined in the process. The houseboat is offered as a replacement and here they start a new life - simple, with very little amenities, but full of fun, love and occasional soul-searching. Cary Grant plays the role with his usual flair, but I thought I've seen a milder and gentler side of him in his interactions with the kids. Sophia Loren was rather exquisite in appearance and a bit too headstrong for the role of a nanny, but then she was a spoiled daughter of a famous father in the movie, so her sometimes odd behavior does not really feel entirely unnatural. The kids were great. Their feelings are always on the surface, played very naturally, and that adds enormously to the movie's emotional charge. The DVD is not much, but it's OK - it is in color, in mono sound, the additional features are very limited - only a couple of trailers and a rather nice photo gallery - but I did not expect much from a DVD with a 1958 movie, I wanted it for a movie itself and I thoroughly enjoyed it.