Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Magic Town Blu-ray Movie Review

Mr. Smith Goes to Grandview.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 22, 2013

One of the most amazing phenomena that cropped up during the 2012 Presidential election was the pooh-poohing of polls by a number of analysts, mostly, if not entirely, limited to those on the right side of the political spectrum. While most national polls showed things amazingly close in the closing days of the Obama-Romney competition, a lot of right leaning analysts outright dismissed any poll which put Obama even slightly ahead. That phenomenon became almost surreal on election night when none other than Karl Rove, the so-called “architect” who had designed George Bush’s victories, refused to believe the ultimate poll—actual election returns. Rove’s mini-meltdown on Fox News became an overnight internet meme as well as fodder for expected comedy routines by the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Polls of course can often be wrong, to the point where the iconic picture of President Truman holding up the newspaper proclaiming his defeat at the hands of Thomas Dewey has become indelibly imprinted on even those who couldn’t care less about American history in general. The science of polling has become considerably more scientific over the past couple of decades, and “poll averaging” sites like Nate Silver’s famous FiveThirtyEight Blog have taken the analysis to heretofore unimagined heights of insight (it’s fascinating to realize that Silver’s background was in baseball statistics analysis). Back in the “Dark Ages” of the 1940s, however, pollsters were a more “up close and personal” lot, often going door to door to interview subjects and compiling their data in similarly old fashioned ways. Magic Town is a charming comedy that could have come from the hand of Frank Capra which deals with a pollster who discovers an amazing little bellwether town which doesn’t just predict elections accurately but seemingly is almost like a fractal image of America at large, a microcosmic recreation of our nation’s opinions on just about everything. Could greed and the nefarious influences of rampant Capitalism be far behind?

The Capraesque connection becomes quite clear when one realizes that Robert Riskin wrote the screenplay for Magic Town. Riskin wrote several of Capra’s most well remembered films, including It Happened One Night, Lady for a Day, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon and Meet John Doe (Riskin also adapted the Kaufman and Hart comedy You Can’t Take It With You for the screen for Capra). Riskin evidently divorced himself from his professional collaboration with the famous director because he felt Capra was hogging the limelight to himself when Riskin perhaps understandably felt that his contributions were at least as important, but Magic Town is a pointed example that even the best intentions can sometimes go at least slightly by the wayside. For all of its Capraesque demeanor, Magic Town misses something of that—well, magic spark that often infused Capra’s best films. The film is perfectly enjoyable and even affecting, but it’s also strangely meandering and all over the map, as if Riskin had a checklist of society’s peccadilloes he wanted to address and needed to make sure all of them got covered in one film.

James Stewart portrays hapless pollster Lawrence “Rip” Smith, who as the film begins is watching his tony Manhattan office close up shop after having lost a sizable polling contract. Smith is a dreamer, a perfectly Capraesque hero who fantasizes over finding a “mathematically perfect” aggregation of people who will make polling an easy prospect. And just like that, a cursory perusal of a newspaper offered to him by a competing firm that wants to hire him makes Smith aware that such a town exists, a little out of the way place called Grandview. In something akin to the Heisenberg Principle, Smith wants to make sure that the people he’s polling don’t become aware of what’s going on (thereby ruining the “purity” of their responses), and so decides to ingratiate himself, along with two of his co-workers, as insurance salesmen looking to make Grandview their new place of business.

Almost immediately upon arriving in town, Smith raises the hackles and suspicions of comely young newspaper editor Mary Peterman (Jane Wyman). Mary is convinced Smith is up to something, and not just because every insurance agent in Grandview is basically starving. She’s also put off by Smith’s insistence that the town not change one iota (thereby ruining his chances of polling their “mathematical perfection”), especially when Mary is all about progress and change, having been a longtime booster of a new Civic Center project which she is sure will revitalize her little burg. Mary sets out to find out who exactly Smith is, writing some fairly derogatory stories about him in the local paper. Can true love be far behind?

Quite a bit of Magic Town works beautifully, albeit in an admittedly old fashioned, fairly corny, style. But about two thirds of the way through the film, right at the point where everything falls apart for Smith after Mary discovers his true intentions, the film goes off on a wild tangent where Grandview’s sudden celebrity (due to being “mathematically perfect”) makes it a flash in the pan, a town full of real estate speculators, people out to make a quick buck and thousands of new residents wanting to live in such a modern Shangri-La. This final act of the film is really peculiar, all the more so because Grandview goes completely bust, seemingly simply because both Smith and Mary were too proud to admit their personal agendas, leaving the idyllic little village to suffer.

That leaves Riskin and director William Wellman a lot to mop up in relatively short amount of time, and despite the ever popular montage sequence, things come to their expected happy ending in a bit too rote of a manner to work up much emotion. The final shot—of Mary and Smith just barely being able to touch each other through a celebratory throng—is perhaps indicative of the film’s impact as well. Magic Town does pretty well for most of its running time, but it never completely reaches the audience in that fundamental way that the best Capra films typically do.

Magic Town Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Magic Town is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. This is one of the nicer looking recent catalog releases we've had from Olive, one with virtually no damage in the elements, and one which boasts exceptionally strong contrast. Gray scale is very nicely modulated, whites are crisp without blooming and blacks very solid with no attendant crush. Fine detail is quite good, with an overall very sharp and precise looking image. As with most Olive releases, there hasn't been any evident digital tweaking to the image, and so grain is fully intact. One thing that the superior resolution of this high definition presentation does do is make the painted backdrops in many of the scenes very noticeable. While there was obviously some second unit location shooting for some master shots, a lot of this film was obviously done in the studio.

Magic Town Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Magic Town features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track that has its fair share of pops and clicks but which has no really egregious damage that prevents the track from being completely listenable. Dialogue is relatively cleanly presented (other than the aforementioned pops and clicks). There's a low grade hiss on the high end that is more noticeable in quieter moments. Fidelity is very good, though dynamic range is rather limited.

Magic Town Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Magic Town Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Riskin had simply revisited his third act in Magic Town, he may have had another blockbuster on his hands. A lot of Magic Town is hugely enjoyable. The basic set up is brisk and innovative, and the interplay between Stewart and Wyman follows in the grand tradition of hate at first sight, true love to inevitably follow quickly behind. The supporting cast here is full of stellar bits by the likes of Donald Meek (as the wonderfully named Mr. Twiddle), Kent Smith as a war buddy of Rip's who helps him infiltrate Grandview, and a hilarious Ned Sparks as Smith's main aide, a cigar chomping cynic who sees right through Rip's greed. But there's something missing here, some indelible spark of energy that keeps the film from ever completely igniting. Still, with expectations perhaps lowered appropriately, there's quite a bit about Magic Town to enjoy, if not to love. This Blu-ray features excellent video and very good audio and comes Recommended.