***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Maureen O’Hare
Directed by W.C. Van Dyke
1934
93 min NR
“It says you were shot six times in the tabloids.” “That’s a lie! Those bullets were nowhere near my tabloids.”
“The Thin Man” is ostensibly a murder mystery surrounding a cranky scientist gone missing in uptown New York, going high-and-low on the social ladder. But it’s really about the banter and buoyant negotiations of a newly-wed couple: ex-detective Nick Charles (William Powell) and his heiress wife Nora (Myrna Loy). Every young couple likes to think it’s this witty. Before the murder, he’s decided to go to seed and spends virtually every single scene in the movie sloshed. After the murder, he keeps putting the sauce away and claiming that he’s not interested in solving anything.
Very subtly, there’s some self-hatred in Nick Charles, a feeling of betraying his working class roots—or something—by becoming an heiress’s useless, kept man. She wants him desperately to (in the parlance of “The Tao of Steve”) “be excellent in her presence” by solving a crime, and he eventually concedes. The murder is solidly built and easy to follow, although we’ve had so much fun with the buzzed bickerers that the solution seems almost arbitrary. The solving scene is a fun parody/homage to Agatha Christie, in which all the suspects get together for a nice meal. (“And the killer is…Bill, do you need a refill?”)
It’s no accident that the script (from the book by Dashiell Hammett) begins not with Mr. and Mrs. Charles, but with the younger couple (including a young Maureen O’Hare) on the verge of being married. At first the two of them seem certain, but the murder makes them apprehensive. Nick and Nora, ever the cool older couple, seem to be with them at every step, unconsciously urging them by example to stay the course. It didn’t hurt “The Thin Man’s” initial popularity in the ‘30s that Nick and Nora were perpetually liquored, never worried about money, and have never even heard of a Depression, Great or otherwise.
The production is undeniably off the studio conveyor belt of Hollywood’s Golden Age, with the same sets, extras, and angles of who-knows-how-many flicks that were also made that month. But director W.C. Van Dyke keeps things moving at a good, comic clip, freeing “The Thin Man” from the stodginess of so many early talkies.
***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, and Roscoe Kearns
Directed by Frank Capra
1934
105 min NR
To watch the films of Frank Capra is to peek inside the mind of a man who had fallen desperately, hopelessly in love with his adopted homeland of America. Using the romantic comedy standby of the couple-on-the-run, whose mutual loathing turns to love, Capra paints a wide canvas of 1930s America. She’s a spoiled rich girl (Claudette Colbert) who wants to get out from under daddy, and he’s a journalist (Clark Gable) who just stuck it to the man to maintain his integrity.
The bus trip that occupies much of the film’s runtime contains as many types as the title vehicle of “Stagecoach,” and they engage in broad conversations and sing-a-longs. Capra lovingly dotes on the aspects of the lovers’ cross-country flight: bathing, shaving, sleeping arrangements, dressing and undressing, and the general life of motels. As the rich girl on the run cuts in the irate line of women waiting for the bath, we can detect that Capra wasn’t so much interested in American individuality as he was in our communal, democratic spirit, in our ability to help ourselves only when we help each other. And at the center is the spirit of egalitarianism: that a woman can smart off to a man and explain things to him, that a tipsy proletarian can talk back to a spoiled rich girl, and that everyone can learn something from everyone else. Everything is, of course, cotton candy-ified as Capra always has a tendency to do. But we accept it because we know he’s dealing with ideals and cultural myths.
Finished Monday, December 5th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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