The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Director:

Tay Garnett

Writers:

Harry Ruskin (screenplay) and
Niven Busch (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

2 May 1946 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Crime | Thriller

Tagline:

Their Love was a Flame that Destroyed!

Plot:

A married woman and a drifter fall in love, then plot to murder her husband... but even once the deed is done, they must live with the consequences of their actions.

Plot Keywords:

Drifter | Murder | District Attorney | Murder Of Husband | Marriage

Cast

Lana Turner	...	Cora Smith
John Garfield	...	Frank Chambers
Cecil Kellaway	...	Nick Smith
Hume Cronyn	...	Arthur Keats
Leon Ames	...	Kyle Sackett
Audrey Totter	...	Madge Gorland
Alan Reed	...	Ezra Liam Kennedy
Jeff York	...	Blair

Runtime:

113 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:PG | Canada:18A (video rating) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Finland:K-16 | Germany:16 | USA:Approved (PCA #11240) | Sweden:15 | UK:A (original rating) | UK:PG (video rating) (1996)

Filming Locations:

Norwalk Train Station, Norwalk, California, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Writer James M. Cain felt that Lana Turner was the perfect choice to play Cora.

Goofs:

Continuity: Frank takes off his tie after getting married, but it is back on at the train station.

Quotes:

[Arthur Keats enters, closes the door]
Cora Smith: If it's the last thing I do, I'll put you out of business. There must be a law, even for lawyers.
Arthur Keats: Of course you know the district attorney fooled you into that confession, don't you? And you fell for it, both of you.
[small hrmph]
Arthur Keats: He planned to get you working against each other. Don't you see?
Cora Smith: You bet I see.
[turning to Frank]
Cora Smith: So when Sackett couldn't get anything out of me, he started in on you, and right away you turned yellow.
Arthur Keats: Yellow? Yellow is a color you figure on in a murder, and nobody figures it better than Kyle Sackett.
[to Frank]
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Can't Stop the Music (1980)

Soundtrack:

She's Funny That Way

Good Atmospheric Film-Noir With A Memorable Role For Lana Turner

The good atmosphere and Lana Turner's memorable role make this a film-noir classic worth seeing. The story starts out to be relatively simple, allowing the cast and the atmosphere to carry it, and then heads through a series of twists and turns, picking up the pace as it goes along.

John Garfield and the supporting cast are solid, but it is Turner who really stands out and grabs the attention anytime she is on-screen. It's nothing against Garfield to say that in comparison he is almost just along for the ride, yet he does a creditable job and makes his character believable. The supporting cast helps out as well, with Cecil Kellaway on-target as Turner's oblivious husband, and Hume Cronyn likewise in good form as a conscience-free lawyer.

The story pulls you in slowly, and then has some good turns as it picks up steam towards the middle. There may be a couple of too-convenient plot developments, but otherwise it is well-written.

This classic version is quite a bit better than the early 1980s remake, which required little imagination to make or to watch. Turner's character and performance, in particular (aided by good camera work), demonstrate that the suggestive can be quite a bit more effective and memorable than the explicit.

"The Postman Always Rings Twice" has just about everything you could ask for in a film-noir. It's probably just a cut below the best of the genre, and still one of the movies that most fans of film-noir would not want to miss.