Shadow of the Thin Man
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Movie Reviews of Shadow of the Thin Man
Movie Review: Nick and Nora Charles Investigate a West Coast Gambling Racket.
Summary: 4 Stars
"Shadow of the Thin Man" (1941) is the 4th movie in the "Thin Man" series directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and the first to which author Dashiell Hammett and screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hacket did not contribute. The new screenwriters, Irving Brecher and Harry Kurnitz, give us a typically convoluted mystery with a big cast of suspects, including many colorful underworld characters, and an unpredictable outcome. The Charles family is back in San Francisco with "baby", Nicky, Jr., now a headstrong 3-year-old. Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) Charles' day at the races is sidetracked by a jockey's apparent murder. Police Lieutenant Abrams (Sam Levene) tries to rope Nick, who would rather be betting the horses, into the case. When reporter Whitey Barrow (Alan Baxter), a professional white-washer for mobster Link Stevens (Loring Smith), is also shot to death, and the murder is blamed on Nick's friend Paul Clark (Barry Nelson), Nick enters the fray to solve the case.
Although William Powell and Myrna Loy have a certain warm chemistry between them, no writer since Dashiell Hammett in his original "The Thin Man" novel has succeeded in giving Nick and Nora Charles that loving, irreverent wit that made 1934's "The Thin Man" so memorable. Nora was always a little wide-eyed, but "Shadow of the Thin Man" marginalizes her more than the previous films. She's a pretty, rich hausfrau but lacks good lines. The mystery is very much in the style of the previous "Thin Man" movies, but the banter is a bit dull and self-consciously precious. This film falls down in the dialogue department, and the slow- and fast-motion shots of Asta the dog, intended for comic effect, are ill-advised. But "Shadow of the Thin Man" still works as light entertainment, owing to Powell and Loy's likability and an interesting supporting cast. In fact, the supporting cast is more memorable than the detectives in this one.
The DVD (Warner Brothers 2005): "The Tell-Tale Heart" (20 min) is a short film of Edgar Allan Poe's story about a man who murders his tyrannical employer and is driven mad by the sound of his beating heart, directed by Jules Dessin. "The Goose Goes South" (6 min) is a Hanna-Barbara cartoon about a little goose who goes South for the winter. But he's not flying; he's walking . He encounters various stereotypes on his journey through the American South. There is also a theatrical trailer (3 min). Subtitles are available for the film in English, French, and Spanish.
Movie Review: One Glaring Flaw
Summary: 4 Stars
Entertaining and charming as this movie is I found one very annoying and puzzling flaw. During the inevitable and formulaic "gathering of the suspects and revealing the killer" scenes, there seems to be the inclusion of what can only be called an editing mistake. I had to watch the ending several times to make sure it was not just my lack of concentration. The police inspector, in response to the killer grabbing a gun after being "outed", pulls his gun and fires off two shots. In the very next cut Nora attacks the killer to disarm him, but no one reacts to the shots fired, no one is hit, and no one acknowledges that it even happened. What's up with that?Movie Review: "And I haven't killed a jockey in weeks - really"
Summary: 3 Stars
Sadly one of the lesser "Thin Man" entries, SHADOW OF THE THIN MAN (1941) finds our delightful crime-solving duo of Nick and Nora Charles on the trail of not one but two murders.
A day at the races turns sour even before it begins, when Nick (William Powell) gets a speeding ticket, and arrives at the race-track to find all hell has broken loose with the apparent "murder" of a star jockey who recently threw a race. Later on during a visit to a wrestling match, another dead body emerges. Nick is sure the incidents are linked, but to investigate he'll need the expert assistance of Nora (Myrna Loy) and Asta...
While this movie features a hum-dinger of a murder, it's not up to the standards of the earlier titles (particularly "After the Thin Man", which I consider the best of the bunch). Quite tellingly, it was the first "Thin Man" without regular screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Other reviewers have pointed out that Myrna Loy's Nora seems to have been dumbed down in this movie, another reason why it loses some sparkle; though she does manage to save the day for Nick in the end!
Stella Adler co-stars as a gangster's moll, with Donna Reed as the secretary trying to save her boyfriend.
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