Shadow Of The Thin Man

Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: W.S. Van Dyke II

Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Sam Levene

From: MGM

I'll cut to the chase: last night I watched this film and tomorrow night I'll return with a review of the last two movies in The Thin Man series. After that, it'll be a variety before I leave on vacation Monday the 22nd. Now, the Letterboxd review:

Last night I watched the fourth film in The Thin Man series and it was largely what I expected. It's fine as I enjoy its formula and while it may not be as great as the first three it's still a nice 3 star movie. This time the family's back home in California (which allows for the grumpy police Lieutenant known as Abrams from the second film to appear here) and the case revolves around a murder that happens at the racetrack and from there you get such things as professional wrestling, racketeering/gambling, feuding newspapermen and characters with such names as Rainbow Benny & Whitey Barrow.

The movie is pretty much what you expect from the series, including the trademark ending where all the suspects are gathered together in a room and Nick explains the case and who the culprit or culprits are. The one different thing is that their son Nick Jr. is a toddler now and at first I thought he was going to be an annoying precocious kid (for example, referring to your dad by his first name) but after that first scene he acted more like a normal kid and he only appeared in a few scenes anyhow.

I mentioned that the last film was more on the serious side and maybe because of that this entry leaned more towards the comedy, which was fine; there were such things as dizziness on a merry-go-round and a brawl in a restaurant. Why there were two moments where their dog Asta moved in slow motion... that I cannot explain. I unfortunately can explain why there's a black maid character and she is made to look dumb by not knowing the right words to say, and that's the racism of the time period but at least that was a minor character so you don't have to do too much cringing.