That makes it emblematic for a detective film where the mystery that would normally be at its center is displaced, along with much of the rest of the plot, by brilliant moments of character and style. It was an "A"-level movie shot in "B"-movie time. Not unlike the close-ups and long shots that divide its stars here, "The Thin Man" is best thought of as as series of singular images, knowing glances, and double entendres that flow like the gin from Nick's martini shaker. "A dry martini, you always shake to waltz time," Nick instructs a bartender, and it's that drily romantic rhythm that matters far more than story.
Van Dyke had just worked with Loy and Powell that year in "Manhattan Melodrama," and convinced MGM to cast them together again in "The Thin Man." Film historian Thomas Schatz notes that "Melodrama" had reworked the early-thirties Warner Brothers gangster formula so it became the launching point for a romantic drama: Clark Gable's hood is sent to the electric chair, which "clears the way for Powell and Loy's happiness."
