SONG OF THE THIN MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 455, 12 March 1948, Page 25

SONG OF THE THIN MAN

M-G-M) NOWING well that the admission may draw hoots of derision from the followers of George Sanders and other present-day screen sleuths, I must confess that I have a sentimental affection for the Thin Man. He dates from my own salad days-more accurately, my ham-and-salad days-we have both grown a little thinner on top, and a little less thin elsewhere. I might almost say that we have climbed the hill together were it not that I reject the implicit suggestion that we are now coasting down the other side. At least, I reject it on behalf of William Powell. As an actor he is still gaining altitude, and even in a trifle like Song of the Thin Man he keeps on a high level. And I might say the same things of Myrna Loy, though it would be honest as well as polite to concede that time has not smudged her silhouette. But Song of the Thin Man certainly 1s a trifle-and like most trifles, rather a confused mixture. Such song as there is is strictly in the modern jive idiom and in several places the dialogue would require annotation to make it completely understandable to the average New Zealand filmgoer-it even has the Thin Man nonplussed. But there is the old familiar deftness in Powell’s acting, that patina which derives as much from time as from’ timing and there are the same allusive jokes: Powell picks up a razorblade at the scene of the crime, "But, .. no, of course, it’s ridiculous," he soliloquises, "it couldn’t possibly have been Somerset Maugham." On the whole I think it would be fair to say that the Thin Man has had better assignments than this, and that if Song of the Thin Man is a little flat in places it is not his fault, or Myrna Loy’s. I certainly enjoyed the film, in spite of the prominence given in it to the lunatic fringe of modern music.