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The Thin Man

This was in Tuesday night's silly film slot following Murder by Death, in which Maggie Smith plays the send-up of the Myrna Loy character and David Niven is the spoof of William Powell. We figured it was a shame to have seen such an entertaining parody without understanding what was being parodied - hence research.

It is a silly film, which will come as a surprise to no-one. Essentially Nick and Nora Charles are a married couple with somewhat of a shady history - she's an heiress, he's a ex-gumshoe who quite frankly has an awful lot of criminal contacts that surface throughout the film, and it's never explained precisely why they got married. Thankfully, Nora appears to be able to take Nick's lowlife acquaintances in her stride, and goes so far as to encourage him to solve a murder case they happen upon on holiday for the fun of it. Yes, this society wife thinks it will be entertaining to see her husband exercise his crime-solving muscles, and eventually he finds himself compelled to, as he is a murder suspect himself (having known the man who is the prime suspect and having the whole extended family plead with him to solve the case rather speeds matters up).

There are actually some rather good comic moments, besides the faces that the Charleses are constantly making at each other and some light humour with their dog Aster. The banter is definitely one of the film's strongest points, not to mention Nick putting Nora into a taxi and sending her off rather than letting her come to interview a lowlife who will eventually be shot. The whole thing culminates with a Poirot-style all-suspects-together do, except instead of in a drawing room at a country house estate over sherry, it's over a polite dinner party - to which some of the guests are dragged in handcuffs by members of the police, while the Charleses continue to behave as if this is a simply wonderful social event.

I think it's safe to say that plot is not really the strong point. There's a bigamous marriage that only gets revealed in the last reel, and the fine points of the murderer aren't really disclosed in any great detail - he outs himself and that's it. But it's all pretty good rolicking, and I'm happy to give it four stars for charm.

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