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Starring William Powell, Myrna Loy. When one rents a mystery, a whodunit, or a classic film noir, written by one of the masters of the genre, Dashiell Hammett, chances are good that you're probably not going to be blown away by the superior sense of chemistry between the films male and female leads, but this was precisely the case in Woodbridge S. Van Dyke's 1934 film, The Thin Man.Starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, your standard husband and wife detective team, Van Dyke's script follows their efforts to track down a rich, eccentric, inventor of decidedly slim proportions. The inventor mentioned to his daughter that he was going away for business for several months (several months?), but would return to California for Christmas. As the Christmas season draws to a close and the inventor has not returned, his worried daughter contacts Powell, an ex-ace private detective, to ask for his help in locating her father. Powell initially turns down the offer, but later changes his mind, partly to satisfy his desire to learn what happened to the inventor, whom he knew on a professional level, and partly to satisfy his wife's desire to watch him do some detecting. However delightful the inner workings of Van Dyke's adapted screenplay are though, what made this film such a genuine treat to watch was the best chemistry between two actors that I have ever seen. Up to this point in time, Loy had been typecast as an exotic actress, often playing the role of an Asian woman. Van Dyke gave Loy the opportunity to shatter this typecasting, and offered her the role of playing Powell's near perfect wife in The Thin Man. Nick and Nora Charles genuinely care for each other, always look out for one another and, despite being married, engage in near constant flirtation, that captures exactly why it is that men and women want to carry on relationships with each other in the first place. The other characters in The Thin Man, while they could have just been window dressing for Powell and Loy, given their inflated screen presence's, are just the opposite: well crafted and distinctive characters. Granted, you do have the staple '30's hard-headed police detective and the small time hood who talks wise, you know, Mac, but the suspects personalities span wide range; the inventor's wife is a petty, adulterous, gold-digger, his daughter genuinely worried about his whereabouts, his step son an intellectual yet boring man, etc. This enables us to keep the characters identities separate in our minds, while also giving us a better chance of figuring out who the murderer really is. When compared to other whodunits like The Conversation (1974's retch-fest) or even Murder at 1600, The Thin Man comes across as being rather light-hearted, a perception created entirely from the loving relationship and interactions between Powell and Loy. However, it was the perfect husband/wife relationship that caused The Thin Man to become such a commercial success that it generated an amazing five sequels, all of which had Powell and Loy reprising their roles as the Charles'. If I am given a reasonably entertaining whodunit, that, in itself, is enough to satisfy me; however, should I be given a reasonably entertaining whodunit, filled with a great chemistry between its stars, an amusing sense of humor, and well-defined characters, I am ahead of the game. The only thing that prevented The Thin Man from capturing the 'Perfect Whodunit' title, was its occasionally unfocused examination of the crime at hand, but, as it stands, is still a wonderfully enjoyable film to see.
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