30 Movies to Get You Through the Holidays

One of the movie’s charms is the playfulness with which Nick and Nora treat each other, and life. During one ostensibly serious scene, Nick pretends to find a piece of lint on her blouse, and then flicks her on the nose when she looks down; she jabs him in the side; he pretends to be about to sock her, and then they both try to put on serious faces. On Christmas morning, Nick tests the new air-rifle he got as a present by firing at the balloons on their Christmas tree. Nick throws a dinner party for all of the suspects, with plainclothes cops as waiters, and Nora tells one of them: “Waiter, will you serve the nuts? I mean, will you serve the guests the nuts?”

The movie’s only real skullduggery comes when Nick goes on a midnight prowl through the inventor’s laboratory, and even then the real sleuthing is done by Asta (Skippy), the couple’s high-spirited terrier. Nick and Nora included him in all of their activities, and Asta became one of the most famous movie dogs of his time, in part through his ability to shield his eyes with his paws when life grew too disturbing to contemplate.

Assuming as we must that The Thin Man is not about a series of murders and their solution (that entire mechanism would be described by Hitchcock as the MacGuffin), what is it about? It is about personal style. About living life as a kind of artwork. Of the early lives of Nick and Nora we learn little, except that he was once a famous San Francisco detective and retired after marrying Nora. As Nick explains vaguely to a friend, her father left her a small-gauge railroad and “Oh, a lot of other things,” and he looks after them. As a consequence, Nick and Nora have a lot of money and spent their time traveling, seeing old friends, making new ones, and drinking pretty much all day long.

At one point in the film, when Nora wakens Nick in the middle of the night, he immediately pours himself a drink and one for her, and then as she leaves the room he greedily drinks from her glass. They are alcoholics in any realistic definition of the term, but not in the terms of the movie, because their drinking has no particular effect on themselves or the plot. It is simply a behavior, like smoking, that gives them something to do with their hands, something to talk about, and an excuse to move around the room. Even when Nora appears with an ice bag on her head, it looks more like clowning than like a hangover.

Myrna Loy was a delightful foil to Powell, but in this film she is essentially just his playmate; Powell dominates the picture with his deep, rich voice, his gliding, subtly unsteady physical movements, and his little mustache that he hopes makes him look more grownup than he feels. For audiences in the middle of the Depression, The Thin Man, like the Astaire and Rogers musicals it visually resembles, was pure escapism: Beautiful people in expensive surroundings make small talk all the day long, without a care in the world, and even murder is only an amusing diversion.

Powell’s career began on the stage in 1912. He worked in silent films from 1922 and in talkies from their birth until 1955, when his last role was “Doc” in Mister Roberts. He was nominated for best actor for this film, the wonderful My Man Godfrey (1937) and Life with Father (1947). But he never won an Oscar. Powell lived until 1984, when he was ninety-two, and was fit and active until toward the end. All through the 1960s and 1970s his fans urged the Motion Picture Academy to give him an Oscar for lifetime achievement, but the Academy never did. To see The Thin Man is to watch him embodying a personal style that could have been honored, but could never be imitated.

This Christmas

PG-13, 120 m., 2007

Loretta Devine (Shirley Ann “Ma’Dere” Whitfield), Delroy Lindo (Joseph Black), Idris Elba (Quentin Whitfield), Regina King (Lisa “Sistah” Moore), Sharon Leal (Kelli Whitfield), Lauren London (Mel Whitfield), Columbus Short (Claude Whitfield), Chris Brown (Michael “Baby” Whitfield), Laz Alonso (Malcolm Moore), Keith Robinson (Devean Brooks), Mekhi Phifer (Gerald), David Banner (Mo). Directed by Preston A. Whitmore II and produced by Whitmore and Will Packer. Screenplay by Whitmore.

I’m not going to make the mistake of trying to summarize what happens in This Christmas. If you see it, you’ll know what I mean. I’m not even talking about spoilers; I’m talking about all the setups as the Whitfield family gathers for the first time in four years. Everybody walks in the door with a secret, and Ma’Dere (Loretta Devine), the head of the family, has two: She has divorced her husband and is living with her boyfriend, Joseph (Delroy Lindo). Almost everyone in the family secretly knows her secrets, but nobody knows most of the others’.