Come on, let’s get something to eat. I’m thirsty.

After the Thin Man

(1937)

(SPOILERS) Nick and Nora are back. There might not be quite as much investigative anarchy as there was first time out, and the booze is definitely not flowing quite so freely, but the chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy is as fresh as ever. This is the longest of The Thin Man series, and at times it does get a little too caught up in respectful plotting, but there’s more than enough wisecracking from Powell (and Loy) to see us along.

W.S. Van Dyke returns to call the shots, while Goodrich and Hackett are back on scripting duties. This well-oiled approach extends to the action, which begins only three days after the original with Nick and Nora still on their post-Christmas train journey. They’re called to the home of Nora’s Aunt Katherine, who thoroughly disapproves of Nick, in order to track down cousin Selma’s husband Robert. They find him without much problem, but he soon turns up dead and assortment of suspects present themselves. More bodies pile up, and before long it’s time for Nick to host another of his Poirot-esque unmaskings.

The plot is quite involved, including a raft of characters with unclear and conflicting motives. There are also some neat red herrings, the most obvious being that Selma (Elissa Landi) looks to have committed the deed up-front. We meet local hoods, blackmailers and floozies. There’s a very young James Stewart (only three years before Mr Smith Goes to Washington, but he seems very much pre-discovered here) who has the dubious distinction of being he wot dunnit. Dubious, because his motives are a bit of a bodge-up as these things go. Still, you can’t have everything. Stewart’s solid enough, but this isn’t his finest hour.

The fun comes elsewhere, including Sam Levene as excitable Lieutenant Abrams (“Where’s this brother of yours who didn’t kill anyone?”), forever interrupting Nick’s lines of inquiry, Jessie Ralph as Aunt Katherine, coming on like she’s just been ejected from a PG Wodehouse novel and beating photographers with her walking stick, and George Zucco (Moriarty in Rathbone’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) in milk bottle glasses as Dr Kammer (who gets the astounded line “Good heavens. I was right. That man is crazy!”). Penny Singleton’s shrill and not-so-bright moll Polly is served some of the best lines (“Waddaya mean illiterate? My father and mother were married right here in the City Hall”; asked how many men she gave keys to her apartment to she replies “Say, what do you think I do? GO round stuffing them under doors?”)

If the drinking is down a notch, it’s still present. As is the innuendo:

Nick: With these earphones, Anderson could hear everything that went on down in your place.

Polly: Everything?
Nick: Everything.

Polly: Ho-ly smoke!

Nick: (appropriate pause)

But it’s the interplay between Powell and Loy that makes this. We kick off with the pair canoodling and telling an inquisitive guard “It’s all right, we’re married”. When pickpocket Fingers lifts Nora’s purse but then returns it, on learning she is Nick’s wife, Nora exclaims “Dear, you do know the nicest people”. He is occasionally a bit of a rotter, again locking her away so she can’t follow him into danger and instructing the police to “throw her into the fish tank”. There’s a running gag about how she is having an affair (“Perhaps I better leave” offers Nick when Abrams asks Nora what she was doing at Stewart’s apartment).

When the New Year lights go on and Nick is discovered kissing the wrong woman, she doesn’t react to the lipstick on Nick with outrage, but a knowing response to his suggestion that he is bleeding (“a little accident”); “I know, this New York traffic is terrible”. Powell gets the lion’s share of the action, but they are equals whenever they share the screen. The early sequence at Nora’s family’s house finds Nick sharing after-dinner cards with her aging relatives. Every one of them is snoring loudly while Nick is left to amuse himself. The more obvious gags are no less funny when delivered by Powell (“Walk this way, sir” invites an elderly butler whose movements are all over the place. “Well, I’ll try,” replies Nick, mimicking him). Nick, attempting to get off to sleep, is wheedled by Nora until he arises and makes scrambled eggs. There’s also a lovely little moment that looks almost improvised, where he instructs her in the art of forgery over lamplight and snatches a kiss.

Asta appears of course. At first not entirely successfully; an attempt to give him a subplot in which Mrs Asta is cheating on him seems to be kowtowing to his huge fan base. It’s a peculiar state of affairs (particularly given the movie ends on Nora’s revealing her pregnancy and many of the jokes are about each other’s mock infidelities) but Asta gets his own scene-stealing set piece moment as Nick and Nora attempt to prize him away from a note thrown through their window. Asta ends up pawing away at a goldfish bowl (“What’s the matter with you on this case? You’re losing your grip”).

After the Thin Man could have done with being streamlined a little, and more mindful of the disrespect Nick shows detective work (while being very good at it), since he’s at his best being wholly offhand about everything. But the scenario is actually a strong one, and there’s an array of entertaining supporting characters. Some have suggested this is actually superior to the original. I’d say not, and its clear Van Dyke was never going to get anywhere near the first tier of directors. It forsakes genuinely inebriated exuberance for something a little more standardised, and it’s a peculiar decision to bring in little knitted booties at the end (bring Nick and Nora back into line?). But, with such a winning double act, as long as Powell and Loy continue dealing out lively banter the series surely couldn’t fail.

***1/2

Comments

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog