I love this stuff

I'm watching The Thin Man. The original in the series. It's the 1930s, people were suffering, and yet this movie was successful enough in its day to spawn at least four sequels. I understand the phenomenon, because I love it, too.

Nick Charles is a former "dick," a working-class stiff with sordid acquaintances, now a "gentleman," thanks to his marriage to the wealthy heiress, Nora. Now he says he helps run her family businesses, but all we ever see our handsome raconteur hero do is drink and charm. His beautiful, elegant wife is better-rounded and has more interests. She drinks and shops. They are usually accompanied by their dog, Asta, who (like Nick and Nora) is just as comfortable in an exclusive club or a seedy gin mill.

Their clothes are gorgeous. Their apartment is sumptuous. Their friends are colorful. Their banter is sexy (and probably shocking for the 1930s). Every now and again they interrupt their wining and dining to solve a murder.

They play. They drink. They make love. They dabble in sordid affairs and murder. They do it all so stylishly. As romantic a fantasy as it seems in 2006, I imagine it was even more irresistible in the 1930s, when so many were unemployed, when unspeakable horrors were taking place in Europe, when the world seemed drab, unimaginative and hopeless. I bet a glorious fantasy in beautiful black and white really hit the spot.