Film Review: The Thin Man Goes Home (1944)

If a film series is popular enough, not even cataclysmic events like the Second World War can stop it. That was the case with the popular series of Thin Man crime comedies, although the war ultimately affected The Thin Man Goes Home, its fifth instalment directed in 1944 by Richard Thorpe.

William Powell and Myrna Loy repeat their iconic roles of amateur detective Nick Charles and his wealthy socialite wife Nora. The plot begins when they decide to visit Nick’s home town of Sycamore Springs and his parents – local physician Dr. Bertram Charles (played by Harry Davenport) and Mrs. Charles (played by Lucile Watson). Since Nick is famous as a detective, the arrival of a favourite son creates a lot of excitement among the population of the small town and rumours that he is investigating an important crime. Nick just wants to enjoy a vacation, but when local youth Peter Berton (played by Ralph Brooks) is killed on the Charles’ doorstep, Nick feels obliged to use his talents to help the local police with the investigation. Berton was an amateur artist, and Nora buying one of his paintings as a birthday gift for Nick gets her involved in a mystery that involves local woman Crazy Mary (played by Anne Revere) and a couple of newcomers strangely interested in Berton’s pictures.

Shadow of the Thin Man, the previous instalment, was released shortly before the USA entered the war. Myrna Loy decided to temporarily end her acting career in order to dedicate herself to war-related humanitarian work in the Red Cross. Although the war wasn’t over yet, three years later she was talked into returning. In the meantime, W. S. Van Dyke, the director of all previous films, had died and was replaced by the experienced and prolific, although not that well-known, Richard Thorpe. The war itself affected the film’s content – there are plenty of references to rationing, which includes alcoholic beverages, so the protagonists had to give up their heavy drinking and satisfy themselves with cider. Even the comical scene at the beginning, when Nick and Nora have to travel in a grotesquely overcrowded passenger train, is inspired by wartime conditions on US railways, when troop and war material transports held priority over anything else. The Thin Man Goes Home also holds the distinction of being the very first Hollywood film to feature the Nambu Type 99 light machine gun, a Japanese weapon also known for its use as a sniper rifle, with its presence in a small American town explained as a war trophy brought by US servicemen from the Pacific Theatre.

On the other hand, the script by Robert Riskin and Dwight Taylor tries to bring something new to the series, which by that time had become somewhat formulaic. The most important difference is the small town setting, which allows for some comical observations about social dynamics very different from the big city upper-class milieu where the previous four films took place. On the other hand, the scriptwriters didn’t care much about continuity – Charles’s son Nick Jr. is simply written out of the film, and Nick’s background as a son of Greek immigrants (from Dashiell Hammett’s original novel) is unceremoniously “retconned” into being the son of an apparently WASPish middle-class physician. The major problem with the script is, however, a rather weak murder mystery which is introduced only after the first third of the film. The mystery, which involves some dark secrets and industrial espionage, only stands in the way of otherwise delightful comical interactions between Nick and Nora, played confidently by Powell and Loy. The mystery also unfolds too quickly, not allowing the audience to get introduced to possible suspects, played by character actors who simply appear too briefly to have an impact, with the possible exception of Donald Meek as an art vendor or young Gloria DeHaven as the comically over-dramatic girlfriend of the murdered man.

Despite those flaws, The Thin Man Goes Home had enough Nick and Nora for the audience to reward it at the box office, which led to Song of the Thin Man, the sixth and last instalment produced two years later. Today’s viewers might enjoy the film if they don’t set their expectations too high.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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