For this week’s look at a featured Letterboxd List I turn to Akira Kurosawa’s 100 Favorite Movies, where I find The Thin Man.
Title: The Thin Man
Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Released: May 25, 1934 (Theatrical – United States)
Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes
Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis) is a scientist with unfinished business. He fires an employee who interrupts him mid-experiment, squares away a dispute with his secretary Julia Wolf (Natalie Moorhead) over some missing bonds, and slips out of town on Christmas Eve without telling anyone where he’s going. His daughter Dorothy (Maureen O’Sullivan) is left hoping he’ll make it back before her wedding on December 30th.
At a holiday party, Dorothy spots Nick Charles (William Powell), a former detective she recognizes. She wants to know if he’s heard from her father. Nick tells her he’s been out of the game for four years. He settles back in next to his wife Nora (Myrna Loy), who decides to match him drink for drink and pays for it the next morning.
Then Julia turns up dead. No gun, no witnesses, no leads. By the end of Nick and Nora’s Christmas soiree, nearly every guest has pressured him to take the case. A letter arrives the next morning from Wynant himself, asking Nick to lead the investigation.
Nora was never going to let him say no anyway.
The humor in The Thin Man caught me off guard in the best way. Five minutes in and the dialogue is already moving at a clip that most films never reach, and it never really lets up.
Powell and Loy are a treat to watch together. They exchange just as many drinks as they do barbs. The end result is a chemistry that feels effortless. You’d be hard pressed to find an on-screen couple today who are able to play off of each other this naturally.
Twenty minutes in and the film has already introduced no fewer than six characters who all feel relevant to the plot. The mystery piles on suspects and motives generously, with plenty of twists along the way, all packed into a 91-minute runtime that zips right by.
It also qualifies as a Christmas movie, even if nobody would think of it that way. The holiday sets the mood without the film leaning on it.
Prior to this, the only Nick and Nora I knew came with an infinite playlist. Learning this was the first in a series has given me plenty of Nick and Nora for my watchlist.