Aboard a gambling ship where Nick and Nora are invited by rich David Thayar, the atmosphere is obviously pretty much poisonous - and by the end of the night, it becomes murderous, too: band leader Tommy Drake, hated by just about everyone on board, is shot. And suspect number one is - Phil Brant, who just married secretly Thayar's daughter Janet. So the newly-weds seek help from Janet's friends Nick and Nora; but instead, Nick turns Phil over to the police - but why? Because he wants him in a safe place, since he's afraid somebody might kill him - and a prison cell IS (temporarily, at least) a safe place...
And then Nick and Nora start their investigations - and very soon we've got a whole bunch of suspects: clarinetist Buddy Hollis, who's become an alcoholic since Drake stole his girlfriend, the beautiful singer Fran (a great performance by Gloria Grahame!), gambling boss Al Amboy, whom he owed a lot of money, and of course Thayar, who disapproved of his daughter's marriage and might want to get Brant out of the way...
And then there are the members of the band, of course, who haven't actually got a motive, but certainly hated their 'boss' enough to actually celebrate his death - but here the fun begins: Nick gets the second clarinetist, 'Clinker', to help him search for the vanished Buddy Hollis (he found a razor blade at the scene of the crime, and every clarinetist uses one for cleaning his instrument...); and so we (and Nick and Nora, who don't seem to be very up-to-date anymore on the latest music hits and musicians' slang) get a chance to see some really crazy jam sessions!
But then things become serious again: they find Buddy in an asylum, completely deranged by now, then Fran is mysteriously stabbed in her apartment - and when Nick and Nora come back home, where they had left Nickie Jr. in Janet's care, they find them both missing... Could she possible be wanting to take revenge for the way Nick treated her husband??
Although at times a bit too melodramatic and complicated, even this last one of the 'Thin Man' films provides many different elements: a shade of Noir, a glimpse into the jazz world, some humor, some suspense, a quite intriguing plot, and good solid performances.
The sad thing about this movie, though, is that the carefree, nonconformist, cheeky Nick and Nora that we knew at last are turning 'typically American', almost bourgeois: they've become rather strict parents (Nick spanks Jr. when he tries to sneak out to play baseball instead of practicing piano), and compared to the 'hep cats' of the band, with first and best Keenan Wynn as 'Clinker', they look - almost intentionally - pretty old-fashioned and stuffy. All this is a mirror of the general atmosphere in the US society toward the end of the 40s, of course; but it also shows that the good old days of crime comedy were coming to an end - and this film is kind of a 'swan song' for that great genre that had blossomed in the 30s and early 40s...
And then Nick and Nora start their investigations - and very soon we've got a whole bunch of suspects: clarinetist Buddy Hollis, who's become an alcoholic since Drake stole his girlfriend, the beautiful singer Fran (a great performance by Gloria Grahame!), gambling boss Al Amboy, whom he owed a lot of money, and of course Thayar, who disapproved of his daughter's marriage and might want to get Brant out of the way...
And then there are the members of the band, of course, who haven't actually got a motive, but certainly hated their 'boss' enough to actually celebrate his death - but here the fun begins: Nick gets the second clarinetist, 'Clinker', to help him search for the vanished Buddy Hollis (he found a razor blade at the scene of the crime, and every clarinetist uses one for cleaning his instrument...); and so we (and Nick and Nora, who don't seem to be very up-to-date anymore on the latest music hits and musicians' slang) get a chance to see some really crazy jam sessions!
But then things become serious again: they find Buddy in an asylum, completely deranged by now, then Fran is mysteriously stabbed in her apartment - and when Nick and Nora come back home, where they had left Nickie Jr. in Janet's care, they find them both missing... Could she possible be wanting to take revenge for the way Nick treated her husband??
Although at times a bit too melodramatic and complicated, even this last one of the 'Thin Man' films provides many different elements: a shade of Noir, a glimpse into the jazz world, some humor, some suspense, a quite intriguing plot, and good solid performances.
The sad thing about this movie, though, is that the carefree, nonconformist, cheeky Nick and Nora that we knew at last are turning 'typically American', almost bourgeois: they've become rather strict parents (Nick spanks Jr. when he tries to sneak out to play baseball instead of practicing piano), and compared to the 'hep cats' of the band, with first and best Keenan Wynn as 'Clinker', they look - almost intentionally - pretty old-fashioned and stuffy. All this is a mirror of the general atmosphere in the US society toward the end of the 40s, of course; but it also shows that the good old days of crime comedy were coming to an end - and this film is kind of a 'swan song' for that great genre that had blossomed in the 30s and early 40s...