Who cares who stole the bonds murdered Wynant's ex-wife or Nunheim

Everyone knows cinema’s greatest power is to communicate through emotion. And what better emotion than love encapsulates our hopes, desires? Therefore what subject is best suited to manifest a projection of our dreams than romance? And isn’t the best part of being in love with someone making each other laugh? That’s what makes the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s so perfect. Especially when what’s at stake is our true feelings. 

     But crime is a diversion. As a genre it doesn’t deal with the same stakes. In its own way it can be fun. But it’s as though because one gets tired of only melodramas, romance, women’s pictures and musicals, every once in a while a change of pace is sought. Mark it the same goes for westerns, action, and horror while we’re at it.

The Thin Man (1934, W.S. Van Dyke) is a whodunnit crime movie that really wants to be a screwball comedy. Except the couple have a seemingly healthy relationship and are happily married. Like the most dazzling screwball (and something it shares with the hard-boiled detective genre), the dialogue in The Thin Man is rapid-fire top shelf slang. As a blended genre it’s quite the cocktail. Even though NICK & NORA’S repartee isn’t as barbed as we might be accustomed to. 
     Nick (William Powell) might be the coolest character Hollywood ever created. If modern discourse in pop culture describes confidence as not caring about the outcome one way or the other, this dude gets it. The 50s delinquents, 60s hippies, 70s loners, 80s punks, 90s slackers were a different type of indifference: they were all anti-establishment, outside of society fringe. In The Thin Man, Nick is the very center of society.
     Think about the setting in this thing. Remember that line at that party when drunk Nora says something to Nick like: he has all the best friends and that’s why she loves him? The endless dinners, parties, and all manner of social gatherings where half New York knows Nick and shows up for are all full of the worst criminals alongside all of the most respectable types. Lowlifes and uppercrust are merged. It’s so refreshing how in this imaginary sphere there’s no class division whatsoever. It’s kinda cute. 
     And it’s not that Nick doesn’t care. Yes, as far as the narrative goes, for the first half of the movie what drives the plot is that Nick doesn’t want to take the case. He’s too cool to let his screwball comedy life turn into a noir. Or like Nora says, “Sleuthing isn’t much fun, is it?” He only finally gets involved because no one else can solve the case and he has a hunch he can figure it out himself.
     What’s also so hilarious about the end of the movie is that Nick invites every single possible suspect, even that entire family, to a dinner soiree and everyone shows up. Because Nick’s too busy hanging out, drinking literally every second he’s awake, with his hot wife who’s just inherited a fortune so he doesn’t ever have to work another day in his life that he can’t be bothered with solving the case. But what if he could manage to work it into just another clever diversion to entertain his party guests? Done.