Houseboat is a 1958 film directed by Melville Shavelson.
Tom Winters (Cary Grant) has been separated from his wife Alice for over three years, and consequently has had little contact with his three young children, David, Elizabeth, and Robert. As the film opens, Alice has been killed in a car wreck. Tom's parents-in-law, who hate him, assume that they will take custody of the children. Alice's sister-in-law Carolyn also offers to take the children in, but Tom, partly out of a sense of duty and partly to spite his late wife's parents, takes his children himself.
Enter Cinzia (Sophia Loren), the phenomenally gorgeous daughter of Arturo, a music conductor on a tour of the US. The extremely controlling Arturo insists on keeping his daughter with him, and refuses to let her meet men or get a job. Eventually, Cinzia makes a break for it, and happens to meet Tom, and takes a job as his maid. Through plot contrivances, the whole family moves in to a ratty old houseboat on the Potomac River. Naturally, love blooms.
Love theme "Almost in Your Arms", heard near the end of the film, is sung by none other than Sam Cooke.
Tropes:
- As You Know: The status of the kids is given in their first scene, where Elizabeth says "Mother would have wanted," and Robert answers "We don't have no mother, she's dead."
- Bad to the Last Drop: When Tom asks for coffee, Cinzia says she's unfamiliar with American coffee and asks if he has an espresso machine. When she finally manages to make him a cup, he tries it, and winces.
- Brick Joke: On the kids' first night in Tom's apartment, Tom notices David looking at a print of a painting of Renaissance nudes. He flips the painting over. A little later he sees David looking out the window, at a woman across the way who is changing clothes. He closes the curtain, then flips the painting back around.
- Creative Closing Credits: Opening credits. The entire opening credits are hand-written in the style of a young child, complete with stick-figure drawings. The credit for director Melville Shavelson is accompanied by a stick-figure drawing of a man cracking a whip.
- Distracted by the Sexy: How the family winds up in the houseboat. Angelo is transporting their (insanely huge) mobile home on a truck. He goggles at gorgeous Cinzia and winds up stopping the truck and chatting with her—while the house is left sitting on the railroad tracks he was crossing. Cue train, completely destroyed house, and the family relocating to Angelo's crumbling houseboat.
- Funny Foreigner: Played for drama, or as an insult. Cinzia, who overall is pretty fluent in English, says "I shall out the lights in half an hour." Carolyn, who has picked up on Cinzia as a romantic threat, laughs meanly and says Cinzia's English was "charmingly incorrect." Cinzia is pissed.
- Italians Talk with Hands: Arturo and Cinzia do the usual angry gesticulating as he insists that she should stay home with him while she says she wants to go out, meet people, get a job.
- Moment Killer: An intimate conversation between Tom and Cinzia is about to end in their first kiss, when Elizabeth comes out and says "Daddy, when are you coming to bed?" (She's been sleeping in her dad's bed because she's scared of thunder.) The moment is lost and Tom leaves.
- Ms. Fanservice: The distractingly good-looking Cinzia. When Tom tells his buddy Alan that he's hired Cinzia as a maid, Alan says "Adopt me."
- Plot-Triggering Death: The story is kicked off by the death of Tom's wife, leading to him taking custody of three children that he has hardly seen for some years.
- Romantic False Lead: Carolyn is finalizing a divorce from her husband, would like to look after the children, is very good looking, and is clearly into Tom. But she is the third corner in a romantic triangle with Sophia Loren, so she has no shot.
- Sleeping Single: Played With, in that Carolyn's soon-to-be-ex-husband is never even seen. But the shot of Carolyn in her single bed, looking wistfully over at the other single bed, shows that she is sleeping alone and is lonely.
