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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.

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