Houseboat
Houseboat
| 19 November 1958 (USA)
Houseboat Trailers

An Italian socialite on the run signs on as housekeeper for a widower with three children.

Reviews
Manthast Absolutely amazing
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.
Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Lee Eisenberg Melville Shavelson's Academy Award-nominated "Houseboat" involves the common trope of "vivacious-but-goofy woman turns serious man's life upside down" (also seen in "Bringing Up Baby", "What's Up, Doc?" and "Something Wild"). But how can you not love seeing Sophia Loren onscreen? Cary Grant's State Department employee is the archetypal man from the 1950s: straightforward, always wearing a suit and tie, and expecting everyone around him to be as no-nonsense as he is. The '60s were a reaction to this attitude.*Admittedly, a lot of the movie shows its age. Many of the family interactions are too cute for my taste. The movie's real joy is seeing Sophia Loren in some of those revealing outfits (well, as revealing as was allowed in 1958). It's not any sort of great movie, but enjoyable enough for its length.Watch for Murray Hamilton (Mr. Robinson in "The Graduate" and the mayor in "Jaws") and Kathleen Freeman (the nun in "The Blues Brothers") in early roles.*Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs was of the opinion that there was always reason for optimism, because, as he put it, no one who lived through the '50s would've predicted the '60s.
SnoopyStyle Young siblings David, Elizabeth, and Robert are trying to come to terms with their mother's death. They are forced to live with their estranged father Tom Winters (Cary Grant) in Washington, D.C. At a concert festival, Robert gets lost and befriended by Cinzia Zaccardi (Sophia Loren). She comes after fighting with her overbearing conductor father. The kids force Tom to hire her as their new maid. Their vacation starts badly when their house is run over by a train. They're given an old houseboat instead.There're a lot of slapping for a romance movie and they're no small swipes. It's a little slower at first. With the arrival of Loren into the group, the movie picks up with more comedy. I'm not sure if Loren and Grant had other rom-coms. His straight-laced and her exotic presence make for a good on-screen pairing although their off-screen pairing may have been more dramatic. It's an interesting what-if in Hollywood casting.
laddie5 Aside from his Hitchcock movies and "Charade," this is virtually the only watchable movie Cary Grant made after 1944. It's really just one more of the bland family-friendly sitcoms that blight his later career, but more interesting than most for a couple of reasons. One is the passel of motherless kids, who for a change are convincingly sullen, bitter and unreachable until a brief last-minute conversion. The other is the presence of Sophia Loren -- raw-boned, gauche, gorgeous, and in real life determined not to become the fourth Mrs. Grant. The movie is contrived and totally unconvincing, but the two stars' tortured feelings for each other keep seeping through, giving many scenes an edgy tension you can't shake off. Loren's artless singing of the fine ballad "Almost in Your Arms" is haunting; their subsequent dance has an emotional fierceness that practically burns a hole in the screen.
bkoganbing Cary Grant, prominent diplomat and widower, is trying to get acquainted again with his three kids, Paul Petersen, Mimi Gibson, and Charles Herbert. He's also got a sister-in-law, Martha Hyer, crushing out on him big time.But after the youngest kid, Herbert, wanders away after a concert, he meets Sophia Loren who is also running away from her conductor father, Eduardo Ciannelli. They are soul mates Herbert and Loren and before long she's moved in on the Grant family.Which is forced by circumstance I won't reveal to live on a houseboat in the woods in Maryland. The Houseboat and its many problems lend itself to a whole lot of physical problems and one rather dramatic one, when one of the kids nearly drowns. Cary gets a lot of good mileage out of the comedy.This was Cary and Sophia's second film together and it was one big improvement on the overblown Pride and the Passion. No doubt that the two of them were still involved from The Pride and the Passion lends a lot of truth in the scenes Grant and Loren play together.Also look for a nice performance by Harry Guardino who's the one who is responsible for the group being on the Houseboat.Houseboat is a nice family comedy and hasn't aged a bit from the Fifties when it was made.