1934 mystery-comedy, dir. W. S. van Dyke, William Powell, Myrna Loy:
IMDb /
allmovie. Turns out life
doesn't have to end at marriage.
Know, o prince, that between the years of Prohibition and the
years of the Production Code, there was an age undreamed-of… a period
of almost six months when drinking was legal again but the Code hadn't
yet clamped down. And this is a preeminent film of that brief age.
For many years it's been my touchstone for quick-fire witty dialogue,
and certainly it delivers that; but it's interesting in other ways
too. The novel was originally going to be a standard Hammett
hard-boiled story, but he felt it wasn't working and shifted it
setting to New York and the protagonist to a wealthy amateur—which
means we get the contrst of the deadly serious criminals of the
hard-boiled world with the happy-go-lucky hard-drinking couple of Nick
and Nora Charles. And because they're married (though even pre-Code
they sleep in single beds, albeit in the same room), Nora's still an
active participant in both the investigation and the banter, a very
rare cinematic view of marriage as something that could be fun,
rather than settling down into dull conformity.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
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