Matt's Big Oscar Chalenge Day Fourty-One: Getting the skinny

One of the elements of 1937 winner The Great Ziegfeld that I enjoyed the most was the the interplay between male lead William Powell and final love interest Myrna Loy in the final third of the film. Little did I know that this was their third film together and they were actually married in a franchise of films known as The Thin Man series. In the film they play Nick and Nora Charles a married couple he a retired dective her a girl-about-town both trying to settle down when Nick is pulled back into action after an old friend of his disappears. His old friend Claude Wynant is the Thin Man of the series but he didn't really strike me as terribly thin. At the same time Claude's girlfriend and personal secretary is killed, possibly by him for taking money that didn't belong to her, so Nick has two cases to solve. Then follows a lot of scenes with Nick interviewing low lives, comic gangsters and almost being killed himself. The final scene sees Nick and Nora host a dinner party with all the suspects present before Nick reveals the culprit. This plot device has been used over and over again in Agatha Christie novels so its seems a bit passe here.

I have to say I wasn't much for The Thin Man, aside from William Powell's wise-cracking razor sharp performance there wasn't a lot to write home about. It wasn't a particularly bad film but the central mystery never grabbed me and one of the best characters, Natalie Moorhead's Julia Woolf, is murdered early on in the film. As well as Best Picture, Powell was nominated for Best Actor (he wasn't for Ziegfeld) and it was also nominated for direction and screenplay but rightfully didn't win any of those either. The film also spawned four sequels which may have been a lot better but I have to say this one left me feeling rather flat.