After the Thin Man

All the Thin Man movies are great.

William Powell and Myrna Loy were such a hit in 1934's The Thin Man that it was inevitable that M-G-M would bring them back for a sequel. There were eventually six "Thin Man" movies and they were co-starred in 14 films overall. This film boasts a bigger budget and a longer running-time. This sequel was also directed by W. S. "Woody" van Dyke and also written by Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett from a story by Daschell Hammett himself.This film is all comedy for the first half-hour, as the story picks us when Nick and Nora are returning by train from New York after the conclusion of the first film. They are exhausted from the three-day trip and want to settle down for a quiet New Year's Eve at home. Unfortunately, Nick's police and criminal friends are throwing a surprise NYE party for them, but the party is so wild that nobody even notices when they arrive at their own house. We also see that there is a Mrs. Asta who has a brood of puppies in a fenced off portion of the yard, but a neighbor's dog keeps squeezing under the fence to visit her. (Both Loy and Asta have a lot more screen time in this film.) Loy gets a call from her family and the couple must come and visit due to a crisis. We are introduced to a dizzying array of more minor characters. It seems that Elissa Landi's husband (Alan Marshall) has been missing for three days, but nobody wants to call the police.Nick and Nora find him pretty easily, as he is at an allegedly Chinese nightclub watching his girlfriend Dorothy McNulty sing. Soon he is murdered and there are a half-dozen suspects that have a good reason to want him dead. There is still a lot of fun (Nick has to spring Nora from jail) but the mystery deepens. Two more characters (including one we haven't met in the film) are killed before all the suspects are locked into a room again and Nick quizzes all of them. I remember being shocked when the killer was revealed when I first saw this 20 years ago.If Dorothy McNulty sounds famaliar, she later changed her name to Penny Singleton and starred in the long-running "Blondie" series. And then later she was the voice of Jane Jetson. Jimmy Stewart does well with a part that could have easily been a one-note role. Allen "Farina" Hoskins of Our Gang fame has a one-line bit part. Ward Bond has a bit part at the NYE party. George Zucco (in some really thick glasses) plays a psychiatrist.The supplements are a Robert Benchly comedy How to Be a Detective (1936), which has a few laughs. There is also a so-so Harmon-Isling color cartoon The Early Bird and the Worm (1936) where a young bird tries to catch a worm with little success and both are pursued by a rattlesnake. There is an interesting trailer for After the Thin Man. There are two radio programs. The first is a 14-minute Leo is on the Air program that presents hit songs from 1936 M-G-M films, finishing with "Smoke Dearms" from this film. The last supplement an hour-long radio adaption of the film from 1940 with Powell and Loy, presented by Cecil B. DeMille (which I didn't listen to.) All of these extras were from the DVD release from years ago.The image quality is very good and there is plenty of grain left from the film. The sound is two-channel mono. There are yellow subtitles for the movie only. The supplements are all in Standard Definition and have no subtitles.

Not quite as good as the first one but still very worth the watching. Nick & Nora have a playful chemistry that holds up even when they are "insulting" one another. It's also wonderful the way they doubt each other, even when Nora walks in on Nick being kissed by another woman or Nora takes off in the middle of the night to meet a man in his apartment. If you enjoyed the first one it's a must have.

The second in the "Thin Man" series finds Nick and Nora arriving home, in San Francisco, by train. A minor miracle given that the trains ended in Oakland, but we'll skip the jokes. Some of the film was shot locally, although it's still nothing more than scene setting, nothing like "Vertigo" where San Francisco is practically a character. It does allow for locals to point out things though, so don't sit too close to any odd looking folks in a theater, or you may end up hearing the penny-tour.Most of the film unfolds indoors, which allowed MGM to dust off the sets and props from "San Francisco", including Jesse Ralph, who reprises her Nob Hill socialite role, complete with pompadour and victorian gowns, in a Victorian castle, in 1936. Oh Hollywood.Unlike today's sequels, which are often to movies based on rather miserable TV shows, no less, this and the one that follows is quite good. The original "Thin Man" was a Dashiell Hammett short story, so they had room to improvise. It does not follow the first, nor set up the third movie, so any of them can be watched as is, but the first three, at least, are very good old films.By "Old" I mean that everyone dresses like adults, and mostly act like adults. Nobody is wearing kiddie shorts and blouses, and kiddie hats, like fifty year olds do today. There are no explosions, no sex or nudity; no special effects that I can think of. It's not even in 3D, although you might find a version "in color", or colorized that is. It's just a well written, light hearted crime story woven through a screwball comedy, with William Powell and Myrna loy making the perfect couple, without making anyone sick by doing so.There are different degrees of quality among the movies of this or any other genre, even among the hallowed classics, and this (along with the first and third films in the series) is one of the better screwball comedies that were made. If you doubt me on that, watch the sixth in the series, shot during WWII, and see what they did to Nick and Nora, "For The War". Oh my. Thankfully, you don't have to, just watch one of the other ones instead.

This movie was very hard to find. So glad it is sold on Blue Ray Disc. Great movie and a must watch for all Dashiell Hammett fans.

a awesome movie the best thin man ever

Dieser Krimi, diese Serie, geht immer und ist nicht nur spannend, sondern auch noch witzig. Die Hauptdarsteller erste Sahne und die Storys, weder platt noch einfallslos: mitraten erlaubt und man wird sich über das Ergebnis wundern.