Search - The Captain's Paradise on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1953 Format: DVD - Black and White - Closed Captioned Edition: Special Collection SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 28 mins Studio: Anchor Bay Members Wishing: 5 Genres: Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Comedy of Manners

In this bright British comedy, we meet Capt. Henry St. James (Alec Guinness) as he stands before a firing squad and then learn of the curious chain of events that brought him to his fate. Henry is a ship's captain ferrying a steamer between Gibraltar and North Africa on a regular basis, and he's taken the notion of "a girl in every port" to a whole new level; he has a wife on each side of the water. In Gibraltar, there's Maude (Celia Johnson), an even-tempered housewife who keeps the house tidy and has dinner ready when Henry likes it. In North Africa, mate number two is Nita (Yvonne DeCarlo), who is a sultry fun seeker who likes to hit the nightspots and dance 'till dawn. Between the two of them, Henry would seem to have the best of both worlds; Chief Officer Ricco (Charles Goldner) openly envies Henry's remarkable romantic situation. But things start to go sour when Maude suddenly decides she's a stick in the mud and wants to start living it up, while Nita becomes a homebody and begins learning to cook; Henry is none too happy about either development, and before long he finds he has no spouse on either shore. The Captain's Paradise was trimmed from 93 to 84 minutes for its initial United States release. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Alec Guinness - Capt. Henry St. James
Yvonne De Carlo - Nita St. James
Celia Johnson - Maud St. James
Charles Goldner - Chief Officer Ricco
Miles Malleson - Lawrence St. James

Part of a brace of cleverly constructed comedies -- played with great inspiration -- that Alec Guinness did for Ealing Studios in the early 1950's, The Captain's Paradise comes to DVD courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment, exclusively as part of their five-disc Alec Guinness Collection box. The disc opens automatically to a menu that's a bit more pedestrian than the other releases in this series but does its job. The transfer offers good contrast and detail off of a clean source that does give us the full measure (within the limits of black-and-white shooting) of the extensive shooting in Morocco and Gibraltar. The image seems sharper and the contrasts deeper and richer than this reviewer remembers from presentations of the movie on public television in the 1970's. The audio is set at a decently high level, and the producers of the disc have furnished a fairly elaborate array of supplementary material -- in addition to the trailer, we also get an extensive, well-written, and nicely detailed on-screen written biography of Alec Guinness, complete with a filmography. That feature slots in well with the accompanying insert booklet, which features an excellent body of background material on the movie, authored by Avie Hern. The presence of 21 chapter in the 88 minute movie also speaks well for Anchor Bay's work, and the trailer -- which looks about as good as the movie -- is a handy bonus. The fact that this title is only available as part of the Guinness box is a great selling point for that box, which offers five movies at a lower proportionate price than the four titles that are in print separately. The movie is not only an inspired comedy, and a very different kind of film from the usual Ealing fare, in its use of extensive location shooting and the presence of American actress Yvonne DeCarlo (in what is arguably one of the two best roles of her career, alongside her work in Jules Dassin's Brute Force), as a fiery Moroccan dancer and temptress, but is also a fairly profound work in its way -- it is built entirely around the notion of the duality of the psyche, and the fact that a man (or woman, as Guinness's character discovers) can have several sides to them, with emotional and sexual needs unique to each that must be met; in a sense, it's a rival to The Seven Year Itch, as either a play or a movie, with wry satirical edges all of its own. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide