Search - Paris Holiday on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1957 DVD Release: 11/21/2000 Format: DVD Edition: Special Collection Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 40 mins Studio: BCI, a Navarre Corporation Company Total Copies: 8 Genres: Comedy, Farce

Two of filmdom's finest farceurs--Hollywood's Bob Hope and France's Fernandel--are teamed in the location-filmed Paris Holiday. Since Hope coauthored the script, however, guess which actor has the largest part. Cast more or less as himself, Hope plays an American comedian who comes to Paris to purchase a script. Little does his suspect that the script contains secret messages pertaining to a vicious gang of counterfeiters. With the help of villainess-turned-heroine Anita Ekberg, Hope is committed to an insane asylum to protect him from the bad guys; he then must rely upon Fernandel to spring him from the looney bin. Throughout Paris Holiday, Bob Hope looks too old and too rich to be indulging in such nonsense. Film buffs will enjoy the brief, unbilled appearance by famed producer-director-writer Preston Sturges. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bob Hope - Robert Leslie Hunter
Fernandel - Fernydel
Anita Ekberg - Zara
Martha Hyer - Ann McCall
Preston Sturges - Serge Vitry

Brentwood Communications has done a surprisingly good job bringing a large portion of Bob Hope's movie catalogue to the scattershot world of budget DVD, but unfortunately their approach falters with the release of Paris Holiday. While Brentwood has done a great job remastering the Technicolor print and the audio track, the DVD only features the pan-and-scan version of a film originally released in widescreen. When you have 1950s sex symbol Anita Ekberg and the antics of lanky French comic Fernandel occupying roughly half the space on the screen that they should, it makes one ponder exactly why DVDs should replace videos in the first place. Thankfully, Paris Holiday itself is far from being one of Hope's best movies so the loss isn't that great, yet it's puzzling why Brentwood would go to so much trouble remastering a movie and then not release it in its original widescreen aspect ratio. Director Gerd Oswald went on to direct Anita Ekberg in the bizarre grade-B Freudian noir Screaming Mimi. ~ Nick Dedina, All Movie Guide