Ex-sleuth Nick Charles (Powell) doesn’t really want to go back to his old profession and why would he? He and wife Nora (Loy) live in the lap of luxury with nil to worry about. But Dorothy Wynant (O’Sullivan) is an old acquaintance of him and on the Christmas eve she has a foreboding that her father Clyde (Ellis) seems to renege on his promise of returning before Christmas to attend her upcoming wedding with Tommy (Wadsworth), as Clyde has gone on a secret business trip months earlier and no one has heard from him since, our reluctant gumshoe only manages to squeeze an interest in the case because Nora eggs him on solving the puzzle simply because it might keep boredom at bay, also for a husband to prove his worth to his wife is quite something can ginger up their marital bliss.
Subsequently, Clyde’s secretary-cum-mistress Julia Wolf (Moorhead) is rubbed out in cold blood, discovered by Dorothy’s mother and Clyde’s ex-wife Mimi Jorgenson (Gombell, with perfect fussy cadence and ditziness) who alights on an implicating item, following by an in-the-know blackmailer croaked for his undue greed, then a skeleton is disinterred in Clyde’s work place which turns out to be deceased for months, whose identity can be easily inferred by detective story-savvy viewers, however, it is the climatic dinner pageantry during which Nick corrals all the suspects in one room before spilling the beans that deliciously spurs the suspense to the finishing line with a delightful veneer of sophistication and delectation.
First of six in massive popular The Thin Man series, and adapted from mystery writer Dashiell Hammett's beloved source novel, W.S. Van Dyke’s series-generator eloquently and unashamedly melds a screwball-y jollification with the morbid procedural of a whodunit, transfused with a fluid agglomeration of nonchalant merry-making, shadowy ominousness, connubial bickering and canoodling in spite of their tonal discrepancy, the outcome is a unique genre-bending humdinger underlined by the optimal duo, William Powell and Myrna Loy’s dexterously relaxed, bibulously rollicking interplay, as well as the gimmicky showstopper, their button-cute fox terrier named Asta, that's the ace in the hole.
referential entries: Gregory La Cava’s MY MAN GODFREY (1936, 7.4/10); John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941, 8.4/10)