The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 23

I’ve been meaning to watch 1934’s The Thin Man ever since I started doing this pointless annual festive film countdown. I knew it would make the cut, but it was seemingly always ‘out of print’; I couldn’t find a copy of the movie that wasn’t ludicrously expensive so my ambitions were thwarted.

Fortunately this year I righted a huge wrong and finally got around to watching it.

And it was nothing short of delightful. I enjoyed every second of it. Ostensibly a whodunnit, it is really an upbeat and light-hearted affair that is both clearly of its time and yet holds up remarkably well today. Although to be fair, it is also not entirely obvious which of the many suspicious characters actually ‘dunnit’ so it does work pretty well as a murder mystery too.

Score for Christmasishness

So much of the film is set around Christmas that you could put forward pretty compelling case to say this is an actual Christmas movie. But it is first and foremost a light-hearted crime caper and it spawned a number of sequels that, as far as I am aware, have nothing to do with Christmas. Which I think makes it more of a Christmas(ish) film than a Christmas film. But it really is very Christmas(ish) indeed.