#6 The Thin Man

January 6, 2021
The Thin Man (1934) ****
TCM
Free
Wildcard

When I said yesterday that I might just watch every movie on TCM from now on, I was not kidding! At least, I wasn’t kidding enough to watch TCM movies two days in a row, at any rate. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

This is the first rewatch of this project, which was never meant to be solely new films, but I was leaning pretty hard on that idea. But they currently have on the TCM app all of the Thin Man movies, and I have not seen all of them!

This first one, though, I have seen I think, three times before now. The first sequel I have seen twice, and the second sequel only once, but there are six films altogether, so I’d better get cracking. Though possibly not all in a row.

This is a charming film with William Powell and Myna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, being charming together. It’s just barely pre-Code, in that Nick and Nora do sleep primly in twin beds, (though you know they are getting it on like Easter bunnies when the camera isn’t rolling), but large sections of the plot involve cheating and mistresses and divorce and bigamy, and some people likely to be living together without benefit of clergy, though it’s not spelled out. It’s kind of dirty for such a twinkly picture.

They drink enough that I wouldn’t recommend a drinking game where you try to match them, in that you would literally die before the movie’s half over, and it’s a short film!

All in all it’s…did I mention it was charming? Well, it is! And I finally broke the accidental animation trope!