The Thin Man (1934)

Did anyone ever really drink as much as William Powell's Nick Charles in The Thin Man, a nominee for Outstanding Production of 1934? I stopped counting after he had downed more than a dozen drinks in the brisk 91 minutes of this film. Is anyone able to function as well as Nick does while drinking? Could that person still be a brilliant detective who can see and interpret clues that escape the police? I started to think that he even drank in his sleep, particularly since there are bottles and glasses conveniently located in his bedroom. Yes, I know that the drinking is part of the charm of the series of Thin Man films that Powell and Myrna Loy, as Nick's wife Nora, starred in, but it is one of those plot points that makes you stop and think. Not for very long, though, as you get caught up in the sharp wordplay of this charming movie.

Interestingly, the film doesn't even begin with Nick and Nora. Instead, we are given the context for the mystery they (well, really, he) will be asked to solve. An eccentric inventor named Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis) plans to go into seclusion for a while in order to complete work on his latest invention, one he's trying to keep secret. His daughter, Dorothy (a very young and delightful Maureen O'Sullivan), interrupts him at work to ask him to attend her wedding. He promises to return in time for the event. Before he can leave to continue his work, though, he has to retrieve some money that he believes his mistress, Julia Wolf, has taken from him. Julia (Natalie Moorehead) has indeed been stealing bonds from Wynant's safe and is reluctant to turn it over to him until he threatens to turn her in to the police.

There’s a fast forward to several months later, and we see Powell's Nick trying to teach some bartenders how to shake a proper martini. Dorothy confronts him and asks for his help in searching for her father, who's now been gone for weeks without any contact. Nick, however, is reluctant to go back to his life as an investigator. His wife's father has died and left him and Nora a fortune, and they've been enjoying a much more casual life in California. It’s only when the bodies start to pile up that he becomes intrigued and that Nora encourages him to get involved.

Wynant's ex-wife and Dorothy's mother, Mimi (a rather shrill Minna Gombell), decides that she deserves some money from her ex-husband, and the only way to reach him is apparently through his mistress. When Mimi arrives at Julia's apartment, though, she discovers the woman has been recently killed. Given that no one else knows where Wynant is, the police and the public begin to suspect that the inventor is the chief suspect. The case then gets even more interesting. A potential blackmailer is gunned down in the street when he tries to collect his money, and a third body is discovered buried in Wynant's laboratory. All the while, the newspapers keep the spotlight on Wynant as the suspect, a testament perhaps to the lurid nature of some news outlets of the time. And there are also rumors aplenty to report. There's an allegation that Wynant has tried to commit suicide in Allentown which the papers pick up and carry. Wherever he goes in public, and even sometimes in the comfort of his own home, Nick gets grilled by reporters who want to know more about the case even before he agrees to do any investigations.

(As a quick aside, I must confess to enjoying the montages of newspaper front pages in old movies. It became a cliché rather quickly, a short of shorthand to keep from taking up too much of the screen time with exposition, but watching the sheer silliness of some of the outrageous headlines always puts me in a good mood. And when other images such as people’s eyes (perhaps to suggest suspicion or surveillance) or paperboys or even just cityscapes are added in, well, I’m hooked.)

With Nora’s encouragement, Nick begins to collect clues and starts investigating the increasing numbers of murders that are related to the case. He starts to figure out who the most likely suspects are and decides to invite them all, along with some other key figures in the case, to a dinner where he plans to reveal the true identity of the murderer. It's quite a party when the cops and various underworld figures sit down to eat. It's reminiscent of the scenes in later detective films where all of the suspects are gathered together for the big reveal--I'm thinking here of the Hercule Poirot films like Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, for example, that I saw in the 1970s--but The Thin Man is an earlier, standard-creating example of this plot device.

While it sounds like this could be a film about serious stuff, it certainly isn't. It's a bright, cheerful comedy, one with some very sexy banter between the two leads and some inspired reaction shots from almost everyone. And the sequence involving the dinner party is very carefully choreographed to achieve the maximum number of laughs. Imagine any "real" detective asking everyone to dress up so as to be accused of murder. Almost every sequence is played for laughs, and it makes for a very entertaining movie to watch.

Powell and Loy are so good here. They act like a happily married couple, two people who enjoy spending time with each other. They also don't seem to take anything too seriously. When Nick sends Nora off to Grant's Tomb to keep her away from the investigation, she tells him upon her return, "It's lovely. I'm having a copy made for you." Even Nick's being shot at is handled for laughs here. When they read accounts in the paper about his encounter with a gunman in their bedroom, they first note that the Tribune says Nick was shot twice but, as Nora puts it, "you were shot five times in the tabloids." Nick's reply: "That's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids." Funny stuff.

By the way, their dog almost steals the film. Asta, who also appeared to great effect in The Awful Truth, is given some of the best reaction shots in the film. For example, Nick allegedly takes Asta for a walk when he's really going to Wynant's laboratory, and watching Asta hide there when Nick claims that the dog is vicious is pretty hilarious. I know it's also become a bit of a cliché to see a scene like that in films nowadays, but The Thin Man managed to achieve a laugh with that joke decades before everyone tried to copy it to lesser effect.

The Thin Man is the first in a series of films based upon the characters created by novelist Dashiell Hammett. This first one is definitely one of my new favorites, primarily thanks to the interplay between Powell and Loy. The rest of the supporting cast is first-rate as well, especially O'Sullivan as the daughter who's willing to take the rap for her accused father. It’s clear to see why she later became a star. You might also notice Cesar Romero in a small part as the new boyfriend of Dorothy's mother; I almost didn't recognize him without that crown of white hair for which he became famous later in his career. And, for some reason, I found the character of Gilbertt, Wynant's son played by William Henry, to be quite entertaining. He's meant to be an intellectual, someone who lives his life in books, and he's the butt of quite a few jokes with his questions about "sadists" and "paranoiacs."

Perhaps the best way to honor the achievements of The Thin Man is to raise a glass, maybe a martini. Or maybe you could develop a drinking game whereby you have to take a drink each time the main characters do. Expect, however, to be quite drunk by the end of the film. I did mention earlier how much drinking goes on in this movie. When Loy's Nora asks for a row of five martinis so that she can catch up with Powell's Nick, you know you're in for a heavy-drinking time. And only Powell could get away with telling a reporter who keeps asking questions about the case that "it's putting me way behind in my drinking." I think that, by the end of the film, he and Nora may have caught up.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Actor (William Powell), Directing (W.S. Van Dyke), and Writing, Adaptation