Some days, it’s rather cool to have Turner Classic Movies as part of my Hulu subscription because then I can check out older movies like, say, 1934’s The Thin Man. The Thin Man, based off a mystery novel by Dashiell Hammett, gave the world Nick and Nora Charles, an urbane married couple who seem to solve crimes in their spare time. They have a dog named Asta, and I remember my grandmother used to use a phrase of someone looking like “Asta’s pet pup” to say the person in question was a disheveled mess. Sometimes, I’d ask who Asta was, but I don’t think I ever got a clear answer on that.
Assuming a dog can have a pet pup of its own, I think I have an answer now.
Despite the title, the “thin man” is not William Powell’s Nick Charles. Later movies in this series–it had five sequels–would not bother with that distinction, but here the thin man in question refers to one Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis), an older man who disappears without a trace. Clyde’s daughter Dorothy (Maureen O’Sullivan) makes a request of old family friend and retired detective Nick Charles to look into things. Nick is a good detective, but since marrying the wealthy Nora (Myrna Loy), he hasn’t done much in the way of being a detective.
Actually, Nick hasn’t done much of anything at all. Nick and Nora give new meaning to the term “idle rich” as all the two do is toss around one-liners and drink. Beyond that, we see Nick and Nora largely lounging around and doing as little as possible. Nick doesn’t need to work anymore, so he doesn’t. Nora somewhat pushes him into solving the disappearance that almost certainly means Nick’s old friend is dead, in part because she wants to see her husband in action and that’s about it for motivation. With some more comedy relief from Asta, Nick solves the case, impresses Nora, and they all have a drink to celebrate. This may be the first time I’ve ever seen a murder mystery resolve the crime over a fancy dinner at the detective’s place with all the various suspects as guests, and there are a lot of suspects, ranging from disgruntled secretaries to smalltime gangster-types.
Movies like The Thin Man were often something like the closest the old studios got to modern TV. New movies in a given series would come out relatively frequently, and some characters appeared more often than others. Nick and Nora may have gotten six movies of drinking and one-liners, but then there’s something like Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy series that ran for 14 films. I’m not overly familiar with most of these other series, but I will say that The Thin Man is an incredibly charming mystery story with two likable lead characters. If there’s a scene that best explains Nick and Nora as a couple, it comes in a moment when Nick finds himself, as host of a raucous New Year’s Even party, having to comfort a depressed Dorothy. Multiple guests assume something is going on with the young woman, mostly that Nick is on the case for her when, at that point in the movie, he isn’t. Holding the crying girl close in his bathroom, Nick can only give Nora an exasperated look when she walks in. A lesser movie might have had Nora make hay about Nick and another, younger woman. That doesn’t happen here. Instead she makes a silly face at him and waits for the girl to untangle herself.
And lest you think the movie is simply using the disappearance/murder of the title character as a delivery system for jokes, most of the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie don’t even feature Nick or Nora but instead set up Wynant as the victim. The audience gets to see who the man is and what problems he has that could lead to his eventual disappearance, and that section of the movie is played completely straight. It’s everything that comes after that’s a bit silly.
Will I be looking out for any of the sequel mysteries? Maybe, but this one was a fine one and done, and given the normal Noir tone of Hammett’s work, a surprisingly fun and light piece of work.
Grade: A-
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