Hacker Cinema
The Thin Man
1934 · Film · 91 min
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke
Former detective Nick Charles has retired from police work, preferring a life of cocktails, parties, and relaxation with his wealthy wife, Nora. Their holiday is interrupted when the daughter of Nick’s former client asks for help finding her missing father, eccentric inventor Clyde Wynant. When Wynant’s body is discovered, Nick is drawn back into the investigation, with Nora eagerly joining him. As the couple questions Wynant’s family, friends, and business associates, a tangled web of greed, deception, and murder begins to unravel.
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14 comments on Hacker News
Here's what I term my "flypaper" movies. If I happen to glance at the satellite TV guide and notice one of these coming up, there's a good change I'll be watching it.
Lawrence of Arabia The Maltese Falcon Most Hitchcock films Blade Runner The Man From Snowy River The Martian Monty Python & the Holy Grail The Princess Bride Serenity The Thin Man series The Thing Tombstone Young Frankenstein Monty Python and the Holy Grail Clerks and most Kevin Smith movies Baby Drive and most Edgar Wright movies Fanboys Spinal Tap Kung Fu Hustle Apollo 13
> Loy wrote that the biggest problem during shooting was the climactic dinner party scene in which Nick reveals the killer. Powell complained that he had too many lines to learn and could barely decipher the complicated plot he was unraveling. It was the one scene when several retakes were necessary, which brought up an entirely new problem. The script called for oysters to be served to the dinner guests and, in take after take, the same plate of oysters was brought out under the hot lights. Loy recalled that "they began to putrefy. By the time we finished that scene, nobody ever wanted to see another oyster".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Man_(film)#Filming
(Great movie BTW!)
Counterweight; Djuna. Good sci Fi.
The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon; Hammett. Good books behind excellent movies.
1939? I suppose you have to pick a year and call that the cutoff.
But you're cutoff leaves to the "Dark Ages" the films Frankenstein (1931), Love Me Tonight (1931), 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), King Kong (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), Stella Dallas (1937), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) to name a few.
HBO max makes me mad. A bunch of good old movies had their rights purchased so if I want to watch the Thin Man, a movie from the 30s, I need to get HBO max. No thank you.
OTOH, I can't imagine enjoying Casablanca in color. Or Citizen Kane, Thin Man, or African Queen. B&W is part of a film's atmosphere, it's different.
I'd never want to see Forbidden Planet in B&W ... and The Day the Earth Stood Still in color? criminal!
In retrospect, I think The Thin Man man is also considered pre-code. That movie is _so_ good. I should watch all the sequels at some point.
I’ll play:
The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Casablanca (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Great Expectations (1946), The Big Sleep (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), All About Eve (1950), A Place In The Sun (1951), High Noon (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), The Wages of Fear (1953). (I slipped two French films in.)
Almost anything by Hawks during those years. Or Hitchcock. Almost anything with Bogart. Or Grant. Or by Wilder.
Tons of noir films skirted the rules.
Look, I’m not a fan of the Hays code but some of those movies were to me better because of what they had to imply.
This is after the Hays code but as an example I recently watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and the remake. I hated the remake. What appeals to me about Elmore Leonard stories is that despite being about bad guys, they have a degree of charm to them (Out of Sight, Justified, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty,etc). The remake took all of the charm out of the original and replaced it with graphic violence and cruelty.
I don't know of it's okay to make this suggestion but many of these movies are available for download in common places. I personally have no qualms downloading movies from the 30s and 40s. It gets grayer for me in as the age gets younger.
To give a HN safe-ish link, here's entry #11, The Thin Man (1934) on the archive
https://archive.org/details/the-thin-man-william-powell-myrna-loy-maureen-o-sullivan-minna-gombell-nat-pendleton-1934
If that's not a good encoding you can easily find other sources.
If that's against your policies, many of these are available on Amazon
When you look at the selection criteria, it's hard to accept this as Kurosawa's favorite movies.
Based on the handful of films I've seen on this list, though, this is probably a list of films you should go out of your way to see if you're into film for something more than just for entertainment. Some are just flat out entertaining for anyone though, with the drama of Witness, the comedy of The Thin Man or the wonder of My Neighbor Totoro. Some show off the technical prowess of the director, like Barry Lindon. Some have stood the test of time as a work of art like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Of course, I guess the point is that great movies hit many of these categories.
I'm surprised not to see more people adding their favorite movies. Just sticking to things semi-related. I may have to go watch "My Man Godfrey" again but at least for me "The Thin Man" and its 5 sequels stuck with me where as though I watched "My Man Godfrey" years ago but I don't remember any details of it. (same lead actor and he pretty much always plays the same type of person)
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is a good movie but if you want some other westerns starting James Stewart I can recommend "Destry Rides Again" which is not super serious but I found it throughly entertaining. Also "Broken Arrow" (1950), (not the 90s John Woo movie which is a fun popcorn movie).
Seeing "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" on the list I recently saw "The Outlaw Josey Wales" which I enjoyed (also a Western with Clint Eastwood)
Of the movies on that list I've seen the one I'd recommend the most is "Women in the Dunes". I don't want to over hype it I've seen most of the movies on the list and they are all great stories but "Woman in the Dunes" might give you something new to think about where as the others are mostly just great entertainment.
I agree with your last sentence but there usually is a reason a classic is a classic. Same applies to literature.
However if there is one thing I have learned is that everyone has different tastes. My wife cannot watch any film made before she was born while my golden age of film is about 1940 to 1970. I will take All About Eve, Double Indemnity, the Thin Man, and anything with Humphrey Bogart over anything released these days. That is not even getting into classic foreign films.
A key component of classic films is that they weren't able to distract special effects, or even colors for some, so plot was that much more important. I can't imagine that mumblecore will survive the test of time but I could be wrong.
Movie franchises and sequels also existed in the 30s and 40s, with series like The Thin Man and the Road to... cranking out new installments every year or so. They thrived for similar reasons to today's comic book movie franchises, and I think they will ultimately share the same fate.
Why do people go to comic book movies today?
1. They like knowing what they're signing up for. As evidence, look at how movie trailers have evolved into Cliff Notes versions of movies over the last few decades.
2. This particular market had been ill-served; so anything catering to this niche was disproportionately rewarded. Comic book fans had long lamented that there were no big budget adaptions of their favorite books.
3. It's easier to make variations on an established template from a production standpoint, and it's easier to obtain financial backing when you can point to prior successes (the "it's like Uber but for Netflix" startup syndrome).
It isn't that comic book movies are creatively bankrupt by definition (nor were The Thin Man movies, and many other franchises over the years). They have a rich well of prior stories to draw on and splash together, and a lot of what Marvel in particular is doing with ongoing narratives is interesting. But they are also racing towards a saturation point which will inevitably result in the collapse of their entire enterprise. They have attracted a lot of good actors, directors and other collaborators; but even with all of that talent they are simply producing too much, too quickly to avoid reaching a point of creative and financial exhaustion.
As others have noted, it's pretty laughable that Marvel and DC have announced slates that run all the way to 2020. They are certainly going to have to cancel or postpone some of those films when audience indifference becomes impossible to ignore. And then like other things that have oversaturated their markets (music / rhythm games), it's going to be a long, dark winter before they get to show their faces in any respect again. I am certain that within the next ten years we'll see articles and interviews talking about how "comic book movies don't sell" and "guys running around in spandex suits are passe".
Meanwhile, if you could approach this stuff in moderation, I think it might work out differently. Make a few comic book movies a year. Make them all distinct from each other. Don't tell the same stories again and again and again (origin stories of characters that have existed for 80 years, for instance). Approach the material from the perspective of telling a story in a new way, rather than rehashing the same story for new money.
Unfortunately, this isn't the way business is done in Hollywood or Silicon Valley or anywhere else. If someone makes money doing something, then thirty other people are going to try to reproduce that success, and many of them may have missed the point of how and why the original succeeded.
Reminds me of Nick Charles from the movie The Thin Man: "The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time." :-)