December 31, 2007
Ringing the Changes
Nick, Asta and Nora Charles. (William Powell, Asta, and Myrna Loy, respectively.)
A private exchange with Balkan Flocker Alek Lindus re: a certain dreary quality attending our ringing-in of the New Year called to mind the Thin Man films.
Me to Alek: Well, really, the thing about celebrating the New Year is that it is not the 1930s and we are none of us William Powell nor Myrna Loy.
Roger Ebert on the original (1934) Thin Man film:
Powell plays the character [of Nick Charles] with a lyrical alcoholic slur that waxes and wanes but never topples either way into inebriation or sobriety. The drinks are the lubricant for dialogue of elegant wit and wicked timing, used by a character who is decadent on the surface but fundamentally brave and brilliant . . . .
. . . most of [The Thin Man] takes place over the holiday season, including cocktail parties on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the exposure of the killer at a dinner party sometime around New Years’ Eve. The movie is based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett, one of the fathers of noir, and it does technically provide clues, suspects and a solution to a series of murders, but in tone and intent it’s more like an all-dialogue version of an Astaire and Rogers musical, with elegant people in luxury hotel penthouses and no hint of the Depression anywhere in sight.
Postscript: Why do I love these old films? Ebert gets at it in the review from which I quoted:
Assuming as we must that The Thin Man is not about a series of murders and their solution (that entire mechanism would be described by Hitchcock as the MacGuffin), what is it about? It is about personal style. About living life as a kind of artwork.
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2 Responses to “Ringing the Changes”
“living life as a kind of artwork” - this is my new years resolution for the decade
Murder mysteries as if written by Noel Coward.