Chapter Two: After the Thin Man
By Brett Beach
July 14, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
As I noted in my very first column, on-screen chemistry (not simply romantic, but otherwise as well) between a leading couple is a reaction that defies any attempts to create a defining formula. It is never simply a case of throwing two handsome and/or beautiful people together and simply letting them inhabit the same space. The sparks can be there. The heat can be there. The attraction can be there. The give and take of two professionals who are expert in their craft can be present. But chemistry arcs just a little further beyond that. As Winona Ryder's character in Reality Bites opines about irony, "I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it." Whether it's Newman and Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, DiCaprio and Winslet in Titanic and Revolutionary Road or Tracy and Hepburn in their numerous collaborations, a cinematic pairing that captures an audience's heart so unequivocally is a rare thing.
William Powell and Myrna Loy had that kind of chemistry resulting in a partnership of 14 films together over a dozen years, three of them filmed and released in 1934 alone. The first of these just happened to be Manhattan Melodrama, which, as astute summer moviegoers, history buffs and/or Johnny Depp fanatics know, is the film that John Dillinger was watching the evening he was gunned to death outside the Biograph Theater. Powell and Loy were two-thirds of a love triangle in that tale.
The director of Melodrama, Woodbridge Strong "W.S." Van Dyke (affectionately known as "One-Take Woody" for his ability to bring in movies under budget and on short shooting schedules) saw what they had and convinced head of MGM Studios Louis Mayer that they would be perfect as husband and wife detectives in a the adaptation of a detective novel that had come out only earlier that year. Van Dyke was granted 21 days to shoot and finished in 12. The result, The Thin Man, was not only a commercial success but garnered four Oscar nominations: for the film, Powell's performance (his first), Van Dyke's direction (his first), and for the screenplay by husband and wife team Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (also their first). Hackett and Goodrich adapted their screenplay from Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name, which oddly enough, turned out to be the last full-length work he would ever complete. Although Hammett's subsequent works did not continue the adventures of his lead characters, Powell and Loy teamed up five more times in further Thin Man sagas, the second of which, After The Thin Man, came out at Christmastime in 1936.
Powell and Loy portray husband and wife Nick and Nora Charles. The movies never show or explain how these two met and this is both a wise script choice and a testament to Powell and Loy's ease with each other. They handle the charm and banter so well there's never any question they were meant to be together. Indeed, if anything, they have the easy conversational flow of people who have been married for decades (and have crack dialogue writers, to boot). He's an ex-detective who now prefers a life of martinis and scotches to corpses and bullets. She is a socialite who is attracted to the rough-and tumble-life Nick used to lead and is pleasantly piqued at all the reminders of his former life they seem to encounter on both coasts and all points in-between. A wonderfully handled running joke in the series is the omnipresence of both ex-cons Nick knows from his professional experience and ex-girlfriends he knows from his bachelor experience.
Like Jessica Fletcher many years later, Nick and Nora have a knack at finding themselves at the center of mysteries and murders even when they would much prefer to stay out of trouble. After the Thin Man is set just days after the end of the first film as Nick and Nora head home to San Francisco via the rails for a quiet New Year's Eve celebration. Solitude is not meant to be their fate, however, and the first reel of the sequel plays like a sly commentary on the success of The Thin Man, or at least a victory lap for the unexpectedly positive reception of the franchise generator.
Upon their arrival at the train station, reporters, autograph seekers, and people on the street congratulating them on the case they have just solved beset Nick and Nora. This all culminates in a sustained piece of insanity when the pair arrive at home for peace and quiet only to find a "surprise party" being thrown in their honor with all the attendees oblivious to who is now in their midst. Nick and Nora blithely give themselves into all the music and chaos and even if the whole of this first 20 minutes doesn't contribute to the development of the story, it admirably performs one of the key requirements of a sequel: give the audience more of what they loved from the first film. It also works a nice reversal from the structure of The Thin Man, where the Charles' didn't show up until after the mystery in that film had already been established.
With barely time to down more than a few drinks, Nick and Nora are called to dinner with her family where her cousin Selma is distraught over the recent disappearance of her husband, Robert, who is given to philandering and frequent benders. He is found but shortly thereafter winds up dead and several more corpses litter S.F. apartments and basements before the murderer is unmasked. The murder plot, however, is little more than a clothesline for the interplay of the duo.
Powell underplays everything, which seems to be the key to why Nick is so charming, in spite of the fact that his constant drinking should render him blotto more often than not or at the least, considerably hung over for the duration. In ATTM, he also gets to show off his detecting skills during a bravura wordless and nearly silent sequence as he breaks into a pair of apartments looking for clues both obvious and otherwise. Primarily, though, Powell allows Nick to inhabit the realm of the charming souse and keeps his performance carefully balanced between droll amusement and mild comic irritation.
Loy matches Powell beat for beat, banter for banter, and (in spirit at least) bourbon shot for bourbon shot. The Thin Man films (at least the first three that I have now watched) seem to take great pains to allow Nora only so much freedom. She wants to help on the cases but Nick finds ways to keep her detained (i.e. locking her in the bedroom, sending her off in a taxi). She is seen drinking but never quite as much as he. I don't suggest an overt misogyny, just a morality in keeping with the Production Code of the time. Nick and Nora have separate beds at home and separate bunks on the train, a fact that renders ATTM'S closing "surprise" all the more so.
Although I have not read Hammett's source material, it does strike me as more than a little amusing that his no-doubt hard-boiled prose and worldview has been morphed into a more cosmopolitan urbane setting. (His involvement carried over into providing a screen story and outline for ATTM, for which screenplay Hackett and Goodrich received a second Oscar nomination). The usual gallery of grotesques and lowlifes is tempered just enough to tweak film noir into film blanc, or rather vin blanc. The convoluted plots of the first two, especially ATTM, bear the signature of Hammett, with more than enough motives and cross-purposes to go around. The ending of both is straight out of Agatha Christie. The Charles' assemble all the suspects in one locale and throw out all their suspicions and allegations in an effort to indict everyone and hopefully trip up the true culprit.
In ATTM, this finale takes up a reel itself but does lead to a truly surprising unmasking: Jimmy Stewart, in one of his earliest roles, is the bad guy! His nice guy David, thrown over by Velma years ago for her rotten mate, has gone "insane" and he was hoping to frame her for the murder. It's a treat to see Stewart holding a gun on everyone and going all trembly-voiced and crazy in the eyes, although he did obsession and madness a lot more subtly and convincingly in Vertigo.
Even if slightly overlong and at times very reminiscent of its forebear, After the Thin Man benefits from having principal talent on both sides of the camera return. If the first one caught everyone a little off guard, this one is a reminder of the delight that can come as well when something is precisely as expected.