Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 15, 2018

Due to the vagaries of international licensing, Arrow Academy has recently released two films for the UK market that I reviewed quite some time ago when Olive released the pair for the United States market, Ramrod and Magnificent Doll. Making those vagaries even more interesting is the fact that of the two I had no problem playing Arrow’s Ramrod in my Region A players, while Magnificent Doll would only boot in my Region B players. Neither film is exactly an undiscovered masterpiece, but they each have their midlevel pleasures, including performances by some of their era’s most noteworthy stars.

For my thoughts on the film, please see our Magnificent Doll Blu-ray review.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Magnificent Doll is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Academy with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Arrow's insert booklet provides the following fairly generic verbiage on the transfer:

Magnificent Doll was remastered in High Definition by Ignite Films and delivered to Arrow Films as High Definition digital files. Additional work to minimise dirt and debris was carried out at R3store Studios in London. The film is presented in its original aspect ratio with original mono audio.

While clarity and sharpness are more or less identical with the Olive release, this release features a much more homogeneous overall appearance, with none of the "dupey" looking moments and less (but not a total lack of) damage in terms of scratches and the like. Grain resolves naturally and is arguably more apparent on the Arrow release. I noticed none of the same sorts of emulsion damage that cropped up in the Olive release, and some of the larger scratches have been either totally eliminated or at least improved. Some optical dissolves can look a bit ragged here, but this is a solid, organic presentation that should please fans.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Olive release sported a DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track, while this release offers an LPCM 2.0 mono track, but other than the two channel iteration, there's very little difference between these two. This track exhibits the same "crackling" noises in the upper midrange that particularly afflicts some of Hans J. Salter's score in pretty much exactly the same way it did on the Olive release. There's also recurrent background hiss. That said, dialogue and effects make it through the gauntlet cleanly enough, and unlike the Olive release, this release features subtitles.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unlike Olive's bare bones release, this Arrow outing has at least a couple of enjoyable supplements:

• Audio Commentary by David Del Valle and Sloan de Forest didn't have much of the typical Del Valle humor, but provides interesting background information.


• Ginger Rogers: Following Her Own Lead (HD; 19:20) is a well done overview of Rogers' film career by Farren Smith Nehme, with some great clips (the snippet from Black Widow, a 1954 Cinemascope noir, looked gorgeous in widescreen color and made me hope Arrow has that on their "to do" list).

As usual, Arrow has also provided a nicely appointed insert booklet.

Magnificent Doll Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I "confessed" in the recent Ramrod Blu-ray review that I gave that film at least a bit of a reassessment after watching and/or listening to the excellent supplements Arrow included on their release. With no disrespect intended toward either David Del Valle, Sloan de Forest or Farren Smith Nehme, even their supplements included on this Arrow release of Magnificent Doll couldn't really make me appreciate this film more than I did when I first reviewed the Region A release. This is glossy, almost pretentious, "history" that works well enough as a soap opera, but which fails pretty spectacularly to give anything close to an accurate account of these characters. The star trio is fine, but unlike Nehme, who found Rogers the magnetic presence in this film, I personally found David Niven's performance to be the most arresting. Arrow's technical presentation has occasional hurdles (especially in the audio), but as usual the release is solid with some enjoyable supplements. For fans of the stars if for no one else, Magnificent Doll comes Recommended.