The Postman Always Rings Twice

The Postman Always Rings Twice, from 1946, based on the novel by James M. Cain, is considered one of the best noir films ever made. Somehow I hadn't seen it, though I thought I did. Maybe I saw part of it on TV years ago. Anyway, I was disappointed by it. It's nowhere near as good as Double Indemnity, also based on a Cain novel.

Both films center around a guy who is induced to kill his lover's husband. This wasn't a new idea even in 1946; it goes back at least to Emile Zola's novel Therese Raquin, and maybe back to the Greeks. The plot is still being used, Body Heat is basically the same thing.

John Garfield plays a drifter who gets a job at a combination gas station/luncheonette owned by jolly Cecil Kellaway. Garfield is floored when he first lays eyes on Lana Turner, but is shocked to find out she's Kellaway's wife (Kellaway is just about old enough to be her grandfather). Nevertheless, she and Garfield smooch within minutes of meeting each other, and they plan to kill Kellaway, because if she just leaves him she won't have any money.

Of course, as in any good noir film, things go wrong, and the murderous couple aren't as smart as they think they are. A snooping D.A. (Leon Ames, who I remember from Mr. Ed) is wise to them, and the second half of the film is legal maneuvering, with Hume Cronyn stealing every scene he's in as Turner's lawyer.

While all the elements of a good noir are there, and I'm sure the book is better (it almost always is) the pacing is off. The director is Tay Garnett, who didn't exactly have a stellar career (what might John Huston or Howard Hawks have done with this?). The script is also awkward, with a scene concerning a blackmailer standing out like a sore thumb. And though Garfield certainly looked the part, I found his line readings stiff and unnatural.

But Turner is sensational. She was a huge star in the '40s and '50s but I don't think too many people under fifty know who she was. She was Marilyn Monroe before Marilyn Monroe, a blonde who oozed sex appeal. She is dressed entirely in white throughout the whole film, perhaps to suggest an angelic quality that is directly opposite her black heart, except for one scene, when she wears black. It's in this scene that she's contemplating suicide. I'm sure men in the audience were mesmerized and would have done exactly what Garfield did.

The film was remade in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange with more explicit sex, but it was a flop.