Sitting Pretty Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Sitting Pretty Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 22, 2017

The Warner Archive Collection has been one of the perhaps unexpected pleasures of the mature Blu-ray era. This “manufactured on demand” line debuted without an overabundance of press and with a kind of unlikely assortment of films which included such disparate titles as Deathtrap, Gypsy, The Hudsucker Proxy, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes , Billy Rose's Jumbo and Fearless (along with perhaps even more unlikely efforts like Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Complete First Season and Green Lantern: The Animated Series), but it has become increasingly popular in the intervening years, providing a wealth of at times underappreciated but (at least in some cases) important films that otherwise would have probably never seen the high definition light of day, at least in disc form. The Warner Archive efforts have had generally very high technical merits, something else that has commended them to home theater enthusiasts. In the “better late than never” category, 20th Century Fox is now aping Warner’s MOD strategy by offering a new Fox Cinema Archives line. Somewhat similarly to Warner’s kind of quiet roll out of their line, Fox hasn’t really marketed these in any hyperbolic way, and in fact their PR firm wasn’t even able to provide Blu-ray screeners (hence the somewhat delayed reviews of the first films in the series). So, how is this first selection of Fox Cinema Archives titles? Read on.

It’s interesting to note that two of the first wave of Fox Cinema Archives offerings feature Clifton Webb, an actor with one of the most distinctive personae in 20th century film, but who has become oddly unremembered in the decades since his death in 1966, despite having been a Fox mainstay for many years in the 1940s and 1950s. Webb had had a successful stage career before journeying to Hollywood, but by the time he made his first big splash in Laura in 1944, Webb was already in his fifties, hardly the time most folks associate with becoming a new star. Laura garnered Webb the first of his three Academy Award nominations for his unforgettable portrayal of Waldo Lydecker. That nomination, as well as the one he garnered for The Razor's Edge, was for Best Supporting Actor, but Webb got one Best Actor nomination as well, for the cheery 1948 comedy Sitting Pretty. Kind of like Webb himself, Sitting Pretty isn’t especially well remembered today, unless of course you mention that in it Webb portrays a fussy nanny named Mr. Belvedere.

Webb was rather (how to put this delicately?) effete in manner, something that reportedly led Daryl F. Zanuck to have qualms about casting him in Laura, since the manly Zanuck didn’t like how effeminate Webb was (of course, the whole gay subtext of Laura has been increasingly discussed as social morés have relaxed somewhat). Kind of funnily, about the only other actor who could give Webb a run for his fussy money, Richard Haydn (And Then There Were None, The Sound of Music), is introduced first in the film, as a, well, fussy neighborhood botanist and inveterate gossip hound and snoop named Clarence Appleton in a suburb somewhat whimsically called Hummingbird Hill. In a kind of weird synchronicity with the real life Webb, who lived with his mother until she died (prompting a famous Noel Coward quote, “It must be terrible to be orphaned at 71”), Clarence lives with his mother (Grayce Hampton), a wheelchair bound elder who imperiously has the family maid push her to the best available window so that she can use her binoculars to spy on the neighbors.

The Appletons have been alerted to some kind of trauma at the nearby King residence, where it turns out the family’s latest in a long line of maids (and/or nannies) has quit in a huff, unable to withstand the torments of three rambunctious little boys, not to mention a mammoth dog who is very friendly. Tacey King (Maureen O’Hara) is at her wit’s end, especially when her attorney husband Harry (Robert Young) informs her his boss wants them to come to a big dinner that evening, meaning they need some kind of babysitter. This somewhat unnecessary prelude sets up a probably too long vignette where the Kings do in fact hire a neighborhood teenage girl, only to return home unexpectedly to find she’s invited half the town over to party in the Kings’ living room. Obviously, a better choice needs to be made, which leads Tacey to place an ad which receives a response from a seemingly perfectly well qualified individual named Lynn Belvedere. Only when Belvedere (Clifton Webb) shows up at her door does Tacey realize that Lynn can be either a man’s or a woman’s name.

Belvedere (as any latter day fan of the Mr. Belvedere television series may recall) has a somewhat mysterious past which seems to have included about every occupation under the sun (and then some), making Belvedere a supposed expert on virtually every subject imaginable. He quickly gets the kids in line (more or less, anyway), but he can’t totally evade the gossip prone tendencies of Hummingbird Hill, which is now abuzz with the supposed scandal of a male nanny at home alone with Tacey. That leads to expected farcical repercussions which of course threaten to disrupt the happy if chaotic domestic life of the Kings.

Sitting Pretty is unavoidably dated, and Webb’s performance, while perfectly enjoyable, might strike some as not really worthy of an Oscar nomination (he seems to be playing a version of himself, in fact). The cast is uniformly great (especially the three little boys, the youngest of whom spends virtually the entire film crying, which made me wonder about his future therapy costs) and everything has a kind of arch quality that makes for some wry amusement if not outright hilarity (one great sight gag involving the youngest tot—who has a penchant for throwing his oatmeal at everyone—will probably elicit a guffaw from many viewers). The success of the Belvedere character in Sitting Pretty led to two sequels, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (with Shirley Temple) and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell.

Sitting Pretty Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sitting Pretty is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's new Fox Cinema Archives imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. Quite a bit of Sitting Pretty looks pretty indeed, with well controlled contrast and nicely modulated gray scale, and with excellent renderings of fine details like the herrinbone pattern in some of Young's suit jackets. But there are a couple of anomalies and other issues that have precluded me from giving this a higher score. There's quite a bit of minor but still recurrent damage in the form of speckling and white flecks, and also some noticeable image instability at various points. While wobble during credits is certainly nothing unusual, there's some kind of damage shortly after the film begins that looks like a combination of warping and misaligned frames. It's very brief, but unignorable, and later slight wobble intrudes a couple of times on establishing shots or opticals like dissolves. There are also occasional brief downgrades in sharpness and clarity that make me wonder if this was sourced from different elements (see screenshots 9, 11 and 13 for some of the less appealing looking moments). There's nothing horrendous here, and, as stated above, a lot of this transfer looks great, including a nicely resolved grain field, but there are a couple of issues to be aware of.

Sitting Pretty Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the other releases in this first wave of Fox Cinema Archives titles, Sitting Pretty has only a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 mono mix, though it would probably be hard to argue that lossless audio would have added a huge amount of punch to these proceedings. That said, there's some damage to this track that in some ways mimics the issue mentioned in the video section above in the film's first sequence. There's a kind of electronic buzz that phases through things briefly, and throughout the presentation there's minor popping at times. All of this said, dialogue is always presented cleanly enough, though the film's score sounds pretty thin.

Sitting Pretty Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:35)


• Photo Gallery (1080i; 5:15)

Sitting Pretty Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sitting Pretty is rather droll in its own way, skewering the "too close for comfort", gossip prone, ways of post-World War II suburban life. Webb is his inimitable self in a role that seems tailor made to his kind of uppity persona, and the supporting cast is enjoyable as well. There's some minor but noticeable damage to both video and audio on this release, but with those caveats noted, Sitting Pretty comes Recommended.