The standard comment and review for 1947's "Song of the Thin Man" is that it is the weakest of the series but still way above your average film. It is the none-too-remarkable conclusion to a great six-film (produced over 13 year period) series and suffers from Hollywood's usual inability to sense when enough is enough. They just tried to wring one too many out of what had once been a good idea.
The basic problem lay in trying to incorporate all the elements that sold tickets to the earlier films. The quantity of these elements grew with each successive film rendering the producers clueless about which ones were actually drawing to viewers; so they just threw them all into the mix.
The interplay between Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) as they move about in the Dashiell Hammett world of odd characters had once been enough to turn a good murder mystery into great entertainment. To this add a little Asta comic relief and you have a complete package.
Then successive pictures introduced little Nicky, overused the Asta gags, infested the cast with characters who rather than being subtly oddball-were overbearing and stupid, and moved ever more toward screwball style comedy. "Song of the Thin Man" is the culmination of this process.
But the real problem is not these less-than-zero additions but the subtractions that they cause. Gone was any pacing and suspense, gone was a clever mystery, gone was a nicely written script; these things were considered unnecessary by the producers and there was no room for them anyway.
So although "Song of the Thin Man" is a murder mystery, it lacks the clues that could provide early answers to perceptive viewers. Any movie mystery can have a surprise ending by revealing too little, but a great mystery film is one where you look back at the end (in retrospective) and see that the necessary clues were provided, had you been insightful enough correctly puzzle things out. This requires great writing, directing, and editing. But when it came time to make "Song of the Thin Man" the producers were just trying to repackage the elements that they thought most fans of the series would turn out to see.
The film opens inside a casino, revealed to be a swank gambling boat named the S.S. Fortune. Nick and Nora are there for a charity benefit and there are cutaways to side stories concerning a member of a jazz band performing on the casino stage. The band-leader (who is revealed to have mega gambling losses to the boat's owner) goes below to break into the casino office's safe and is shot in the back by an unseen assailant. For its oddball characters, "Song of the Thin Man" has Nick and Nora paling around with jazz musicians, in a jazz world mysteriously lacking in African-Americans but making up for it with slang that seems to come from another planet.
All this said here are some interesting things to look for in "Song of the Thin Man". Patricia Morison plays Phyllis Talbin and Leon Ames plays her husband Mitch. Morison's failure to become a big star is perhaps the biggest mystery of Hollywood-she is not just breathtakingly beautiful but is blessed with acting talent as good or better than any of her contemporaries. If Ames looks familiar it is because he played supporting roles in most of the baby boomer Disney films.
Keeman Wynn (of Dr. Strangelove fame) is clarinet player Clarence 'Clinker' Krause. You recognize the voice more than the face. His once intentionally funny lines have become so out-dated that they are unintentionally funny.
Gloria Grahame is unexpectedly sultry as singer Fran Ledue Page, just a few years away from her show stealing performance as Ado Annie in "Oklahoma".
"The Honeymooners" Jayne Meadows appears Janet Thayar Brant and is quite good in what is the film's only really difficult part.
And what's up with "reed-man" Buddy Hollis.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
The basic problem lay in trying to incorporate all the elements that sold tickets to the earlier films. The quantity of these elements grew with each successive film rendering the producers clueless about which ones were actually drawing to viewers; so they just threw them all into the mix.
The interplay between Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) as they move about in the Dashiell Hammett world of odd characters had once been enough to turn a good murder mystery into great entertainment. To this add a little Asta comic relief and you have a complete package.
Then successive pictures introduced little Nicky, overused the Asta gags, infested the cast with characters who rather than being subtly oddball-were overbearing and stupid, and moved ever more toward screwball style comedy. "Song of the Thin Man" is the culmination of this process.
But the real problem is not these less-than-zero additions but the subtractions that they cause. Gone was any pacing and suspense, gone was a clever mystery, gone was a nicely written script; these things were considered unnecessary by the producers and there was no room for them anyway.
So although "Song of the Thin Man" is a murder mystery, it lacks the clues that could provide early answers to perceptive viewers. Any movie mystery can have a surprise ending by revealing too little, but a great mystery film is one where you look back at the end (in retrospective) and see that the necessary clues were provided, had you been insightful enough correctly puzzle things out. This requires great writing, directing, and editing. But when it came time to make "Song of the Thin Man" the producers were just trying to repackage the elements that they thought most fans of the series would turn out to see.
The film opens inside a casino, revealed to be a swank gambling boat named the S.S. Fortune. Nick and Nora are there for a charity benefit and there are cutaways to side stories concerning a member of a jazz band performing on the casino stage. The band-leader (who is revealed to have mega gambling losses to the boat's owner) goes below to break into the casino office's safe and is shot in the back by an unseen assailant. For its oddball characters, "Song of the Thin Man" has Nick and Nora paling around with jazz musicians, in a jazz world mysteriously lacking in African-Americans but making up for it with slang that seems to come from another planet.
All this said here are some interesting things to look for in "Song of the Thin Man". Patricia Morison plays Phyllis Talbin and Leon Ames plays her husband Mitch. Morison's failure to become a big star is perhaps the biggest mystery of Hollywood-she is not just breathtakingly beautiful but is blessed with acting talent as good or better than any of her contemporaries. If Ames looks familiar it is because he played supporting roles in most of the baby boomer Disney films.
Keeman Wynn (of Dr. Strangelove fame) is clarinet player Clarence 'Clinker' Krause. You recognize the voice more than the face. His once intentionally funny lines have become so out-dated that they are unintentionally funny.
Gloria Grahame is unexpectedly sultry as singer Fran Ledue Page, just a few years away from her show stealing performance as Ado Annie in "Oklahoma".
"The Honeymooners" Jayne Meadows appears Janet Thayar Brant and is quite good in what is the film's only really difficult part.
And what's up with "reed-man" Buddy Hollis.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.