The Thin Man

"The Thin Man" belongs to the annals of golden age cinema, that type of cinema that is now lost to us, the one where they say, "They don't make 'em like they used to". We search desperately for a film that is as witty, and as entertaining as "The Thin Man", but it is all in vein, for there will never be another Nick and Norah Charles, so why bother to try?

"The Thin Man" is a cheer up film for me, I may not be down or depressed when I view it, but no matter how I'm feeling, it makes me feel better than I was before. There is no trick as to why it makes me feel this way, it's designed to do it, that's what movies from the 30s were supposed to. They may have been going through a depression, but at least they didn't have to worry about feeling bad when going to the movies.

"The Thin Man" has a bit of a legendary history, it was made on a B-movie budget, it was directed by W.S. Van Dyke, a man known as "One take Woody", yet despite all it had against it, it became a classic. This is mostly because of William Powell as Nick Charles and Myrna Loy as his wife Norah. The film became so successful, its two stars went on to make five more "Thin Man" sequels.

The plot is a goody convoluted detective story based on the book by hard boiled novelist Dashiell Hammett (He wrote "The Maltese Falcon" among others). It concerns the disappearance of a temperamental scientist who had many enemies. When many of those enemies end up dead, the trail leads back to the scientist. Nick Charles is a former detective brought in reluctantly to help with the case, he's retired now and his wife is rich so he would much rather spend his time spending her money and drinking her liquor.

The suspects are all colorful and suspicious, you have the scientist's estranged ex-wife, his book keeper who was a former jailbird, a stool pigeon for the cops, and his lawyer among others. The only climax that fits in this screwball murder farce is to bring all the suspects together in an elegant dinner party hosted by Nick and Norah.

You can't really say "The Thin Man" belongs to the film noir element, even though there are a number of murders, much of it takes place in dark spaces, and its hero is a hard boiled, hard drinking detective. "The Thin Man" doesn't belong in film noir, because it doesn't wallow in despair, it's light, it's funny, murder is used mostly as a plot device to drive the story forward. What we have here is a comedy, dependant upon the repartee of its two stars. "The Thin Man" wouldn't be the classic it is today if it weren't for William Powell and Myrna Loy. Along with "The Thin Man" films, the pair appeared in a number of films together including "The Great Ziegfeld", "Manhattan Melodrama", and "Libeled Lady", despite their many appearances, they aren't as fondly remembered as Tracey and Hepburn or Astaire and Rogers, and that's too bad.

I always found Powell and Loy to have a very playful relationship, and with Nick and Norah they have a nack for not taking things too seriously. Even when Nick is attacked by a shooter in their bedroom, he punches Norah in the face in order to remove her from any danger. She wakes up disappointed not having seen her husband defeat the bad guy.

In reality Nick and Norah would be poster children for alcoholic's anonymous, but their amount of drinking fits perfectly in movie reality. At times Nick appears tipsy, but he always remains clear, precise, and logical. As for Norah when she finds out Nick has drunk six martinis she quickly catches up with him. This never seems to be destructive behaviour since they themselves never become destructive, who are we to argue? It makes for a more entertaining film.

I'm not condoning alcoholism, obviously we all should take a step back and remind ourselves this is a movie. This is why Nick and Norah can never be again, they were never prudes, they always were themselves, and they are irresistible that way. If "The Thin Man" were to be remade today, I fear their drinking would be toned down, because today drunks can no longer be heroes, they must remain drunks. Nick and Norah would deplore any such remake.

I just finished watching "The Thin Man", and I feel better than I did two hours ago. I wasn't feeling particularly bad, but I'm happier now than I was, that's what "The Thin Man" can do, that's what Nick and Norah can do, that's what a really great movie can do. Do yourself a favour, watch "The Thin Man" and lighten up.