The Hip Pocket #25: THE THIN MAN

Maybe the perfect definition of a Hip Pocket movie for us

We all have movies we love.

Some of them are great movies. Some of them are terrible movies. Love does not care. Love is unreasonable. Love is blind. We love what we love, and the louder you love it, the better.

One of my favorite things is sharing a film I love with someone. Even if they don't love it the same way I do, that experience imparts something about you to that person. When you share something you love, you are sharing a part of yourself, and there is nothing more vulnerable or personal than that.

I don't think of these movies as the canon or the official library or anything that formal. These are all just movies I keep in my hip pocket, movies I've filed away as part of my own personal ongoing film festival as worthwhile and notable.

This is an ongoing list, one without an ending. This is The Hip Pocket.

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The Thin Man
William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Nat Pendleton, Minna Gombell, Porter Hall, Henry Wadsworth, William Henry, Harold Huber, Cesar Romero, Natalie Moorhead, Edward Brophy, Edward Ellis, Cyril Thornton
cinematography by James Wong Howe
music by William Axt
screenplay by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich
based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
produced by Hunt Stromberg
directed by W.S. Van Dyke
not rated
1 hr 31 mins

This is the perfect example of what a Hip Pocket movie is. The Thin Man is not some unknown obscurity, but in today’s pop culture landscape, I would hardly say the property is still what we would call central to the mainstream. A huge hit upon release and the foundation of an early successful franchise, the film is something you have to actively decide to watch today, something that takes some effort.

When I show it to people, it is absolutely a test. I wouldn’t dislike someone if they don’t like the movie, but if someone loves it, it opens up the door to so much other stuff I can share with them. The Thin Man is a vibe, an attitude, and it means so much to me on a personal level. If someone connects to it, that establishes a common vocabulary between us, and it can lead to so many other fun things to share.

The following piece was originally commissioned as part of the PULL MY STRINGS series by Aaron Morgan.

When magic occurs, who is responsible?

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to call the chemistry between Nick and Nora Charles “magic.” When MGM purchased the novel from author Dashiell Hammett, they didn’t even pay him the highest fee he’d ever been paid for one of his works, and they ended up assigning the film to Woody “One-Take” Van Dyke, a director known more for the speed with which he shot than the quality of the footage he captured. When he cast the roles, he had to battle the studio. William Powell was considered too old, and the Philo Vance mysteries had established him as a certain kind of square. Meanwhile, Myrna Loy was thought of as mysterious and exotic, more suited to the mistress of Clyde Winant than the plucky wife of the main character. None of it should have worked according to conventional thinking, and they shot it cheap and fast, getting the whole thing in the can in two weeks.

The result was nominated for Best Picture, and it single-handedly created the idea of a movie franchise, spawning a total of six films and cementing Powell and Loy as one of the great screen couples of all time. So how does that happen? How does an unlikely mix like that result in something so wonderful? Who is responsible? Can you even pull it apart enough to be able to answer that question with any confidence?

I’m happy to try. After all, there are few things that bring me more joy than Nick and Nora Charles and their adventures. I’ve made hundreds of references to that love in things I’ve written over the years, but I’ve never actually reviewed the original movie or discussed exactly what it is that makes this such a special example of a genre that is pretty much exactly my wavelength.