One shouldn’t spend too much time comparing an original story with its film adaptation. All writers know that as soon as the options are picked up and the payments deposited, the film version is out of their hands. It’s lucky that they aren’t forced to sign non-disclosure agreements enjoining them from claiming that they actually did write the originals. During Hollywood’s golden age, successful writers were often seduced by the money-flow to try to write directly for The House. But Hollywood’s house-money wasn’t easy money for many artistically ambitious writers. Fitzgerald desperately wanted to make a career of screenwriting, but failed repeatedly. Faulkner simply left town and returned to Mississippi without informing his bosses. Hammett essentially stopped writing altogether after The Thin Man‘s success as a film.
Some adaptations are brilliant; they have turned slight confections into masterpieces. Lubitsch was famous for trawling the Vienna and Budapest boulevard theaters for trifles that he and his ingenious collaborators, Samson Raphaelson, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, reshaped into world-historical comedies. Preston Sturges turned Molnár’s brittle The Good Fairy into magic for William Wyler. The script for The Thin Man by the respected husband and wife team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich is still widely praised — it’s funny and urbane, and largely followed the instructions of director Woody “Fast Shooting” Leonard to focus only on Nick and Nora and not to worry about the rest. The rest, of course, is the story itself, which includes the crime, the victim, the murderer, and the rich and varied society of high- and low-life supporting characters that people Hammett’s world. Most of the film’s admirers seem to be ok with forgetting everything but the famous “five scenes” in which Nick and Nora have their witty repartee and do their drinking dances.
I’ve already expressed my reservations about the film. The whodunit part takes up most of the screentime, but it’s so tangled that Powell is said to have had a hard time remembering his summation lines at the final dinner party. I feel the noir elements just don’t work with the cheery marital comedy. But it goes deeper. The decision was clearly made by Leonard and his writers that they would make the comedy of The Thin Man equal to the brooding melodrama, instead of comic relief. Maybe if they had had more than sixteen days to shoot it, they might have made different decisions. But they must have been happy with the results, even though three-fourths of the film are spiritless. The studio was certainly happy when the film raked in at the box office and the boom of detective couple dramedies took off.
Hammett’s novel is certainly funny — most of the film’s humorous talk comes straight from the book. Nick and Nora are quite like Powell and Loy’s portrayal of them; you can easily imagine their voices as you read the novel. I think, though, that Hammett’s Nora is less of a dipso than the film’s, and she’s not always happy with Nick’s habit. And Powell’s Nick may sound like Hammett’s, but he doesn’t act like him. Powell combines several of the toney mannerisms of his previous detective-series persona, Philo Vance, with the subtle slapstick schtick of often being near-slurring plastered — while regaining complete control when he’s out in the world doing his detective thing. Hammett’s Nick drinks like a fish, but he doesn’t sway. Powell might have used a drunken master thing as Sam Spade might have, to put his suspects off guard, but the novel’s Nick doesn’t do that. As funny as the novel often is, it’s not comic, and it doesn’t exactly end happily.
Hammett’s The Thin Man can’t compare with the genius of The Maltese Falcon, and that had to be deliberate, at least in part. There’s no myth, no glances into the abyss, no guild of thieves, no poetry of ellipses. But Hammett was a brilliant writer, and you can feel that he chose to use words differently because his detective’s world is now more varied and populated. The novel The Thin Man is not only told from Nick’s perspective exclusively, it’s in the first person. Like all of Hammett’s detectives, Nick keeps a lot to himself. He’s not quite as taciturn as Sam Spade, or as amoral, and his relationship with Lieutenant Guild is generally one of mutual respect. One big change is that he keeps Nora abreast of the case, as if he expects her to offer some game-changing perspective along the way — which she in fact does. He trusts her utterly to soften his world-view. So far so good. He’s smooth, but never clownish. He’s comfortable in his wife’s polite environment, but Hammett manages to convey that he is always one step away from it. He drinks a lot and is quick of wit; but he doesn’t talk too much, and even in the first-person narrative keeps things from the reader. We know from casual hints that his past includes some sordid relationships that still have some radioactivity.
Many folks think The Thin Man reflected Hammett’s own fissured life — married into high New York society but carrying, and maybe even haunted by, his long associations with the underworld. Like Nick, Hammett was a brilliant talker, a snappy dresser, with an increasingly toxic drinking habit. A fish out of water who drank like a fish. Like Nick. But less happy about it. The novel’s Nora is so generous and caring about others’ welfare that she almost balances out Nick’s world-weariness. Like the film’s Nora, she is fascinated by Nick’s iffy connections. These are not, however, the comic goofballs we see in the film’s Christmas Party but an unpredictable, cynical, and violent underclass. And this is my main beef. The difference in tone between film and book has mainly to do with the world of the supporting characters, who are much more important in the novel than the film. In the novel, the Charles’s friends are damaged and untrustworthy. Nick and Nora don’t just cheerily slalom among them, they have to take care of them sometimes, and suspect them always. There is no happy ending there, other than getting out of town.
Though Hammett’s novel is often very funny, the wit of Nick and Nora is like the flash of sunlight on the surface of a deep and muddy river. Having witty protagonists does not a comedy make.