Please do not take this as an abundance of pride on the part of this Catholic film reviewer, but when you have seen as many movies as I have for The Legionnaire, you start to look to the periphery for titles that jog the dim recesses of the memory.  It is not simply that I have watched a lot of motion pictures, I have also studied cinema academically.  As a result of my explorations, I am aware of not only the ones with which the majority of people know, but also some that were popular at one time but fell out of favor.  I would place The Thin Man (1934) in that latter category.  As might be expected, I have covered most any other title you can think of for the blog.  This is tricky when scrolling through menus on streaming services.  Whenever I pass by a flick that many enjoy but has been written about here, especially one that has appealed to me, I feel a slight pang of longing.  To assuage my hurt feelings, I remind myself of the goal, as farfetched as it may seem, of reviewing every film for the betterment of your soul.  Not everyone has the same taste, so I try to vary my approach.  Having said all this, I do try to be sensitive to the movies I think will be more broadly appealing.  I hope you find something to like about today’s entry as I did.

The secretive inventor Clyde Wyant (Edward Ellis) is The Thin Man, I guess.  I am not sure why this is the title, but he is the first person we meet.  Shortly after berating his assistant, his bubbly daughter, Dorothy Wyant (Maureen O’Sullivan), enters his laboratory to announce her engagement to Tommy (Henry Wadsworth).  The news is welcome, softening Clyde’s mood.  Still, he will not telling where he is off to in order to continue his work, but promises to return in a few months’ time for the wedding.  His reticence continues when Herbert MacCaulay (Porter Hall) comes into the room.  Despite Herbert being in charge of Clyde’s affairs, namely money, the scientist still will not reveal his destination.  What has Clyde in a good mood is Dorothy’s upcoming nuptials, for which he intends to make a large financial gift.  Yet, when he goes to his safe to look for the high yield government bonds he kept there that he wants to use to this end, he finds them missing.  To him, there is only one person who could be responsible: Julia Wolf (Natalie Moorhead), his secretary and sometime lover.  To this latter status, Clyde is even less pleased when he goes to her apartment and finds Joe Morelli (Edward Brophy), a stranger to Clyde, sitting in her living room.  Joe leaves and Clyde argues with Julia about the missing money.  Eventually she admits to taking it, but not having the full amount with her, she plans to pay when she is able.  We then get back to Dorothy, who has gone with her fiancé to visit her mother, Mimi Wyant Jorgenson (Minna Gombell), and step-father, Chris Jorgenson (Cesar Romero).  Some weeks have gone by and nobody has heard from Clyde.  This fact has everyone worried, but for different reasons.  Dorothy is the first to fret, thinking something happened to her beloved father despite Tommy’s assurances.  Mimi is concerned because Clyde is the one who kept her supplied with cash, and thus able to lead her lavish lifestyle to which Chris contributes nothing but his looks.  With alarm beginning to spread about Clyde, those involved to seek out the talents of Nick Charles (William Powell).  He had once been a famed detective, but retired when his wife, Nora Charles (Myrna Loy), inherited a fortune.  Since then, they have been enjoying a wealthy existence, meaning they are spending their money with little care but their own pleasure.  Clyde had been a friend of Nick’s, so Dorothy is the first to come to him, then nearly everyone else already mentioned.  The police, too, headed by Lieutenant John Guild (Nat Pendleton), are interested in Nick’s thoughts on Clyde’s whereabouts.  Each time, Nick drunkenly reminds them that he is no longer a gumshoe.  At the same time, Mimi travels to Julia’s to inquire about Clyde.  Instead, her ex-wife finds the secretary dead, but takes a bracelet made by Clyde with her before calling the authorities.  This news intrudes on the Charles’ Christmas party, along with more insistent calls from Clyde’s family that Nick look into the case.  The visits do not end with their soiree, the Charles receiving a knock on their door in the middle of the night from Joe, who is keen to convince Nick of his innocence.  The gun in the thug’s hand does not help matters, but Nick is able to deal with it just as Lieutenant Guild bursts into the room.  The cop had been following Joe.  All this adds up to Nick being on the case whether or not he wants to be.  Going with Lieutenant Guild, Nick visits Arthur Nunheim (Harold Huber), a frequent informer for the detective.  The rat, however, sneaks out the back of his apartment before he can reveal anything, and later is found murdered.  As this goes on, Nora receives information that Clyde is alive.  Unfortunately, what evidence there is for the killings seems to point to the previously missing man.  On a hunch, Nick investigates Clyde’s work space along with their dog, Asta.  The pooch paws at a patch of flooring and soon uncovers a body that the police assume is Clyde’s long-time rival, Rosebreen (not pictured).  Yet, Nick’s analysis of x-rays from the cadaver tells him that it is actually a deceased Clyde they have found.  Though Nick has his suspicions, he decides to host a dinner party with everyone connected to the case, telling them that the culprit is in the room.  Once he has let everyone know that the most recent victim was Clyde, he begins to go through the suspects.  It all adds up to a person who had intimate knowledge of all Clyde’s dealings, and that person is Herbert.  He gives himself away by trying to pull a gun on Nick, who punches the lawyer in the face.  With the case solved, the Charles head back to California on the train with the newlywed Dorothy and Tommy.

As delightful is The Thin Man as a story, I found it hard to keep track of all the vagaries of Nick’s investigation.  I am not even sure what made Herbert the prime suspect other than he gives himself away at the end.  There are other concerns that speak more to behaviors at which a practicing Catholic would shake their head.  The first that comes to mind is when Nick decks Nora, knocking her out.  This is done to get her out of the way of Joe’s gun, a bullet from which grazes Nick’s torso.  Still, I would hope there is a better way to keep one’s wife safe.  Though these are not particular to Catholic weddings, Christian vows include wordage that would suggest that you should not take a swing at the woman to whom God has entrusted to your care.  An arguably bigger problem is Nick’s drinking.  To be blunt, he is an alcoholic.  Spiritually speaking, one of the issues with such disorders is that it puts a substance, in this case liquor, in the place of God.  To be sure, Nick is not diagnosed as such, but he is constantly talking or thinking about having a drink.  I understand that attitudes on such things were different back then, but his consumption is at a dangerous level.  Outside of these things, I am not sure what else to say about the film from a Catholic perspective.  Its main focus is the mystery surrounding Clyde’s disappearance and later death.  There are characters in it that are after money and nothing else, including Nick to a certain degree, freely admitting how much he loves Nora’s wealth.  I do not mean to suggest that their marriage is unhealthy, but there is a lot of time spent discussing money.  The pursuit of riches, like alcoholism, can become another god that distracts people from where our true treasure lies, that being with God in Heaven.

I spent most of the last paragraph talking about minor problems in The Thin Man.  Overall, though, it is a fun movie to watch with some pretty good dialog in it.  If you can handle some of the scenes I described, you will get a solid murder mystery along with it.