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"The important thing is the rhythm." Nick Charles is introduced shaking a dry martini to the pulse of a cocktail-lounge waltz, Nora enters negotiating an avalanche of Yuletide packages: Not the Nick and Nora from Dashiell Hammett's typewriter, but from the svelte sensualism of William Powell and Myrna Loy. He's a retired sleuth who turns the slur in his voice into a lilt but can spring into action while still in his pajamas, she's a pert heiress who matches him drink for drink, wisecrack for wisecrack. (The central marital image mates Loy's sideways glance with the Buñuelian delectation of Powell taking aim at Christmas tree ornaments.) Their interplay provides the wry center in a whirlwind of mugs, coppers, stiffs, Freudian brats, and a socialite's (Maureen O'Sullivan) fall from grace, all done in a style of swift ebullience. "A little detecting once in a while just for fun," thus the missing inventor (Edward Ellis) and the gaggle of suspects. Greedy widow (Minna Gombell), slick gigolo (Cesar Romero), underworld cannonball (Edward Brophy) and snooty Oedipus (William Henry), a captive audience around the swells' dinner table. "Can you tell us anything about the case?" "Yes, it's putting me way behind in my drinking." W.S. Van Dyke hurries everything along like a traffic cop, signaling characters this way and that and continuously orchestrating movement in unbroken, mid-distance blocks—schedule-shaving tactics that enhance the freewheeling atmosphere and James Wong Howe's Renoir-like setups. The deductive mind and the tipsy eye, just a pair of good-humored sharpshooters enjoying each other while the most talented terrier in the history of cinema plays silent witness. "Well, any port in a storm." Screwball speed and friskiness plus a few noir shadows already in place, for the benefit of Bringing Up Baby and The Maltese Falcon. With Nat Pendleton, Porter Hall, Henry Wadsworth, Harold Huber, and Natalie Moorhead. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |