Owned version: The 2012 Warner Brothers DVD release as part of the Complete Thin Man set. (Aside: Holy shit, did I get lucky with this purchase - apparently it went out of print shortly after I bought it and now it's available for stupid prices on the secondhand market.)
Acquired: June 16th, 2015 from Amazon.
Seen before?: No.
While it's often given to sequels to check in with its characters a short time after the events of the preceding film, it's less common to see a continuation that picks up exactly where the story left off. This, then, makes After the Thin Man an unusual specimen inasmuch as it gives its leads only the space of a cross-country train ride before drop-kicking them back into the same kind of drama they resolved at the end of The Thin Man (apparently, the After in the title is literal). What follows is basically the first film but twenty minutes longer, as Nick and Nora drink and quip their way through a convoluted murder plot involving several sleazeball mugs of Nick's acquaintance and a few members of Nora's well-to-do extended family. It is, on the basest level, the laziest kind of sequel, one that simply serves up the same dish as before but bigger. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
And in this case, there's nothing wrong with that. What's enjoyable about After the Thin Man is how, indeed, it offers up a lot of the same pleasures that marked its predecessor - especially the Nick-and-Nora relationship, one of the great teams in cinema. William Powell's effortless, high-toned charm folds nicely into the sozzled nonchalance of Nick Charles, his disarming bemusement serving as armor against the lowlifes and thugs he used to deal with on the regular (though he's not above the occasional show of force, e.g. "Give me that phone.") Meanwhile, Myrna Loy exudes a relaxed confidence endemic to Nora's life of privilege but balances it with a quick cutting wit - she's a firecracker in the guise of a throw pillow. (Check her weighing a knife in her hand as she says to Nick, "I wouldn't kill you...") Most importantly, there's not just a genuine electricity between the two but also an ease, a comfort that makes them completely believable as a loving and functional couple. Which is more than an accent - it's the point.
It's a canny move to involve Nora's family. The first film built a fantasy life, a carnival of boozy excess at its holiday-celebration apex, and cast that against the gritty milieu of Nick's former gumshoe life. This initially manages a similar effect by putting the avatars of Nick's former life on one side and the representatives of his and Nora's current life on the other; when Nora, after having spent a large part of their California disembarking mobbed by reporters and petty crooks familiar to Nick, tosses off, "You wouldn't know them, darling. They're respectable," in regards to a couple in her social circle... well, that's a pretty clear demarcation of the line between the two worlds, and indeed many of the early laughs come at the distaste Nora's aunt Katherine and Nick (or, from Katherine's mouth, 'Nick-o-lahs') feel for each other. ("What are you muttering to yourself?" "I'm getting all the bad words out of my system.") Where the first maintains the fantasy by holding the division, though, After complicates its high-low divide by letting the spheres bleed together and ricochet off one another. This makes explicit some ideas about class that the first was content to leave implicit (consider that the solution to the murder hinges on a wealthy person failing to recognize a member of the help), but it also works as a metaphor for how to make a relationship work. You can't keep everything separate - you gotta mix the worlds, blend two unique perspectives into a new and engaging whole.
Doing so often means admitting certain ways in which you would be incomplete without your partner. After the Thin Man has an amusing undercurrent in that vein - if the first was about Nora spurring Nick back into the world he left behind, this is about Nick's realization of his occasional failings as a detective and how he's better off with Nora in his life - without Nora, Nick wouldn't have the solution, wouldn't recognize the verbal slip made at the climax. He keeps, amusingly, finding ways to send her out of harm's way and keep her out of the line of fire, but at the end he needs her there. And he's so wrapped up in the mystery at hand he doesn't notice that she's not drinking like she used to. Which leads to a last-minute revelation about another way couples can blend their interests.
(Another note of interest/source of amusement - neither Nick nor Nora sees the parallel plotline involving Asta... which delightfully mirrors the dynamic in the central relationship that led to the plot-driving murder. It's important to try and grasp all the resources you have at hand, even the ones you might take for granted.)
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