Review of The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) by Edith N — 28 Nov 2006

This is my absolute, all time favorite of the Thin Man movies. Nick goes home to his father's house. His mother is a sweet old thing, played by character actress Lucile Watson, whose film career went back to an uncredited 1916 performance in [i]The Girl With Green Eyes[/i]. His father . . . is not. He is played by Harry Davenport--Dr. Meade from [i]Gone With the Wind[/i], and his career went back to 1914.

In fact, all of the [i]Thin Man[/i] movies are filled with the very familiar and the vaguely familiar. Heck, Jimmy Stewart's in [i]After the Thin Man[/i]. Half the cast tends to be someone you're sure you recognize from somewhere.

Aspects of the movie are quite different than in the ones before and after. (Well, there's only one after. But still.) It's a delightfully middle-class film, very different from the rarefied atmosphere they generally inhabit. There's very little drinking (apparently, liquor rationing was on at the time). One feels Nick's liver must have delighted in the break.

The crowded train is another one of the WWII-centric aspects of this film. (Well, it [i]was[/i] released in January, 1945.) So are the omnipresent soldiers and sailors. (The previous one, [i]Shadow Of the Thin Man[/i], was released in 1941, and the next, [i]Song of the Thin Man[/i], was '47.) I strongly suspect that the "charity" bazaar and dance were to support war-related causes, though it's never actually specified.

I love this movie. Its cast of characters is delightful. Its plot is nuanced (for a Thin Man movie, anyway). And you spend far less of it worried about liver failure.