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Directed by Tay Garnet
Written by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch, from the James M. Cain novel
Starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn
USA, 1946
Not Rated (mature content)
KISSES AND MURDER
Frank Chambers (John Garfield), a drifter, accepts a job as a mechanic at a diner-gas station in California. He is a man who can’t sit still and has always hopped from job to job. He meets the wife of his stout, friendly employer (Cecil Kellaway), a voluptuous, sexy temptress named Cora Smith (Lana Turner), and the two fall in love. Bound to her loveless marriage, Cora believes the only way for her to make something of herself by keeping the diner and to be with her lover is to murder her husband. The attempt fails, but lands Mr. Smith in the hospital. When he returns home, he announces he is going to sell the café and move in with his dying sister so Cora can take care of her. The ambitious femme fatale won’t have it, and this time, an attempted murder of Mr. Smith is successful. Frank and Cora are found out, though, and a hot-blooded tug-of-war of vengeance begins between the two lovers.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is intense, but, I assume that by 1946, its plot had already become banal. It is your basic crime-and-punishment tale topped with passion and intrigue. It was adapted from a novel by the then-controversial novelist James M. Cain, whose own book, Double Indemnity, was a brilliant (and much better) film with a similar set-up: a murder revolving around an adulterous affair. The Postman is a bit more than a rehash, though. The love affair here seems to have more ‘love’ in the equation, while Double Indemnity’s screen couple always seemed to have a foundation purely of decadence, infatuation, and lust. The struggle of Frank and Cora is very compelling; our leading lady married her husband only for security, but she is just as restless as Frank and simply cannot live with her husband after she meets someone she actually loves. It is sad, and what Frank and Cora do is extreme and desperate, a magnification of the discontented, passion- and sex-starved wife and the lonely, obsessed traveler.
Lana Turner delivers as Cora; she is tender is some scenes, downright malicious in others, but always sensuous, sometimes frighteningly so. Cora Smith is one of the famous screen noir women- feline females who bring shame and crime to themselves and their men- and Turner is at her best in this well-sketched role (even though Barbara Stanwyck’s performance in Double Indemnity finds that film yet again bettering its follower). John Garfield’s performance is quite extraordinary in its detailed anxiety and torrid compassion, and he has a screen presence and the smoky look to match Turner’s.
Turner and Garfield together are superb and many of their scenes are surprisingly erotic. The Postman was one of the trailblazers for today’s ‘erotic thriller’ genre, but don’t hold that against it. The two stars have scenes together in which passion is pent-up, but a raw, violent sexiness (that was later made cruder in a remake with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, which, I hear, is awful) simply oozes out. (Tim Dirks has remarked that "The sexual, electrical chemistry between the two lovers results in an uncontrollable, unpredictable explosion - an overpowering metaphor of death and destruction," referring to the sequence of the first murder attempt in the film, which fails because of a power outage.) The romantic yet fatal and murderous sexuality in the film (expressed with kisses and words) is an answer to modern cinema’s unabashed nudity, which has already become a bore.
Hume Cronyn exudes such a grotesque, young-lawyer villainy that he becomes the core antagonist here, not the two lover-criminals. Cronyn plays the couple’s attorney after they are discovered, and he manipulates the law to free his clients, and his minions later hound the couple with threats to reveal the truth of the crime. We surprise ourselves when we discover we are hoping the film’s murderers can pull off their crimes; we have become so attached to them, and are given so little detail of Mr. Smith, that we wish only for the happiness of our two main characters. After the law enters, Cora and Frank’s relationship becomes mangled by lust for revenge, and the need to test the strength of each other’s love.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is not a masterpiece for a few reasons. Tay Garnet isn’t always successful at keeping the film even in its suspense, so the movie feels choppy at points and sometimes seems as if it is rambling, especially in the final act. The main reason why The Postman doesn’t quite come off is because of its ending, which is saccharine to a fault. The finale, which is, at first, powerfully dark and paradoxical, metamorphoses into a nice, sweet message on redemption and second chances in life (hence the title), which was more successfully handled in A Place in the Sun, which now seems to me strikingly similar to The Postman. The noble morals of "love cannot withstand sin" and "crime doesn’t pay" are made trite.
However, the film doesn’t completely melt under the weight of this inappropriately virtuous ending (though it almost does). The potency of the film is memorable because of Turner and Garfield’s chemistry. The movie is powerful because of the blood-thirsty fragility of Fred and Cora’s love, which might not be love at all, but instead reckless attempts at lives less ordinary than those of an itchy hobo and a bored wife.
By Andrew Chan
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