The Postman Always Rings Twice The Postman Always Rings Twice
1946 Directed by Tay Garnett
Synopsis
Their Love was a Flame that Destroyed
Illicit lovers plot to kill the woman's older husband.
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"Stealing a man's woman - that's nothing. But stealing a man's car - that's larceny!"
Lana Turner has one of the greatest screen entrances I've ever seen - second to Orson Welles in The Third Man. Before this film I had only heard of her by name but never watched any of her films. Talk about being perfectly cast as Cora - she's absolutely stunning.
John Garfield is a great choice here too as Frank Chambers, a wanderer looking for work. He stops upon Twin Oaks, a diner on the side of the highway with a "MAN WANTED" sign out front. After meeting with the owner Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), he's then teased by his beautiful wife (Turner) and you…
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Tay Garnett's fatalistic and mutually calamitous film noir opens with its protagonist drifter Frank (John Garfield) as he arrives at a roadside diner. It's a hot summer's day, he orders a burger, is greeted by the owner Nick (Cecil Kellaway), runs out to pump some gas, and leaves Frank alone in the diner. Suddenly a rolling lipstick tube crosses the floor towards him. In motion with the camera, Frank looks back to see where it came from. All we see is the bare set of a woman's legs. The camera cuts back to Frank who literally looks like the breath has been knocked from him. Then there's a full shot of the leg's owner - an unforgettable screen presence of…
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"Stealing a man's woman - that's nothing. But stealing a man's car - that's larceny!"
Lana Turner has one of the greatest screen entrances I've ever seen - second to Orson Welles in The Third Man. Before this film I had only heard of her by name but never watched any of her films. Talk about being perfectly cast as Cora - she's absolutely stunning.
John Garfield is a great choice here too as Frank Chambers, a wanderer looking for work. He stops upon Twin Oaks, a diner on the side of the highway with a "MAN WANTED" sign out front. After meeting with the owner Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), he's then teased by his beautiful wife (Turner) and you…
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The book is great, OSSESSIONE (the Italian neorealist version from 1943) is excellent, but weirdly the 1946 American version of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE has always left me cold. I love John Garfield and Cecil Kellaway. And the first hour is good. But after the murder, it just escalates into hokum. It works in the novel and even in the Nicholson/Lange version, but it just doesn't work for me here. The ending is pure bullshit too.
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which is widely considered as a paradon for noir cinema, and gained some attention through his jack nicholson remake in the 80ies, was in fact the weakest of the 5 noirs i've seen back to back. once more you get a little bit too much of a story, that doesn't focus either on the couple, nor the murder, when it starts to become a bribe and courtroom story additionally.
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Lana Turner steals the show from the moment the camera pans her leggy frame in the opening scenes. Also of note here is the sleazy criminal lawyer, played to perfection by Hume Cronyn.
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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Retains a lot of the plot and darkness of the novel but I wanted more moral ambiguity, however implied. Garfield is outstanding as Frank Chambers. Lana Turner was too beautiful though. Pictured Cora as a trampier kind of hot. An entertaining adaptation but not a perfect one.
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A great Film Noir that features fantastic performances all around.
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This late forties noir has a long legacy of remakes (it was itself the third adaptation of the novel upon which it was based). It is also intrinsically linked to Billy Wilder’s 1944 film, Double Indemnity, another film about a man conspiring with a woman to kill her husband. I think Wilder’s film is a lot better, but this is a pretty good noir in and of itself. This feels like the kind of movie that has probably provided fodder for a lot of papers about gender roles in film noir. I didn’t find it to be as visually inventive as a lot of noirs, and frankly, I’m beginning to get a little sick of noir as a whole. That’s not the film’s problem though and the legal aspect of this was sets it in a special place.