Boring

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of the darker film noirs from the 1940s, in which the characters commit heinous crimes and have few redeeming qualities. The film ultimately reaches the profound conclusion that it sets out to make, but the path moving towards that goal is unnecessarily complicated and not always believable. The film's premise is kick-started when Frank, a vagabond, and Cora, a frustrated housewife, form an intimate connection. Their relationship seems rather dubious, as the affair starts quickly despite Frank's apparent lack of charm, good looks, and personality.Cora claims she felt connected to Frank because of his "smarts," but this apparent intelligence is suspiciously lacking onscreen. It is possible the movie wishes to implicate Cora in manipulating Frank for her own purpose, but this implication is not strong enough to overcome the doubtful beginning of the relationship. However, as the two become entangled in crime, their relationship becomes more realistic and interesting. The movie presents a fascinating psychological study of love and trust in a criminal situation. The plot for the first half of the movie is straightforward, even boring--it isn't until the second half that events accelerate. The fluctuating love-hate relationship between the two leads keeps the plot interesting, but at times the movie focuses too much on technicalities, while other scenes from the movie seem unnecessary for the ultimate goal. The acting serves the plot well enough, but there are certain lines of dialogue delivered with such a dated acting style that it could pull a viewer out of the suspense. The final scene of The Postman Always Rings Twice offers a perfect conclusion for a film noir, as it raises questions regarding the moral responsibility of man and the consequences of a person's actions. This result is worth a watch, even if the the movie as a whole isn't as gripping as it strives to be.

One of the greatest of the Film Noir classics. This is the story of an unhappy woman who enlists the aid of a drifter to kill her husband. It begins with what appears to be a mere flirtation and escalates to a torrid love affair. Lana Turner is sumptuous, and John Garfield has that masculine edge, a dark man, somewhat mysterious, and truly clueless as he gets into more and more trouble. The two begin a sophisticated plot to do in her old man. He can't believe his good fortune to have this beautiful woman want him. Oh well. The best laid plans. The desolation of the place and the use of fine black and white cinematography enhance the danger.

The Postman Always Rings (1946): Dir: Tay Garnett / Cast: John Garfield, Lana Turner, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames: Psychological thriller about karma that is done in similar vein as Double Indemnity. John Garfield stars as Frank Chambers, a drifter who arrives at a diner and eventually lands a job there. Cecil Kellaway plays the diner owner, Nick Smith whose wife Cora Smith, played by Lana Turner has an affair with Chambers. She doesn't love her husband and schemes with Chambers to have him murdered so that she may take ownership of the diner. Eventually they succeed but not everything goes as smoothly as planned. Director Tay Garnett ups the tension to counter any possible sympathy given the wrong parties. John Garfield as Chambers is a man concealed by lust and lured into a dire scheme that doesn't reveal all of the answers until the consequences surface. Lana Turner as Cora is tired of a passionless marriage and lured by greed. Cecil Kellaway as Nick is blunt in his future plans that would have Cora in a life not desired by her. His weakness is his drunkenness, which Chambers and Cora take full advantage of. Fine supporting work by Leon Ames as a clever attorney pitting one factor against another, and Hume Cronyn as an equally clever lawyer. Theme regards the price of sin and its ability to knock on one's door willing to deliver unwanted news. Score: 9 / 10

A double-bill of two vintage films adapted from James M. Cain's 1934 novel THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RING TWICE, 1946's Hollywood B&W version and Visconti's groundbreaking debut in 1943, while intentionally evade the less-championed 1981 remake with Nicholson and Lange. The 1946 film, directed by the prolific journeyman Tay Garnett, is a less riveting Film-Noir compared to Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, 8/10), virulently extends the mismatch of the married couple Cora and Nick by casting the stunning beauty Lana Turner and the nondescript good fellow Cecil Kellaway, bar the gaping age difference, they don't belong together in any universe. The interloper is the shifty-looking drifter Frank (John Garfield), the unscrupulousness is all on his face, and driven by lust he falls for her at the first sight. But as the code of this specific genre, the evil thrust is almost inclusively kick-started by the female-fatale, "I wanna be somebody!", as Cora contests, she is stuck in a miasma and Frank is the last straw. As the title suggests, there are two attempts of murder (poor Nick), after a botched first one, in order to facilitate the second one, the film hastily piles up all the stimulus, including a horrid one when Nick decides to wrap up their business and move back to his hometown in Canada, and wait for the worst part, Cora will be coerced to attend to Nick's bed-ridden sister. Nick must die, there is just no other way around. It is a cheap shot. After a fine touch with echoes, Nick is dispatched successfully, then the film spirals with its poorly contrived script including the cringe-making mediation of the justice system and the worst double-cross scam from the DA Mr. Sackett (Ames), who has been ominously introduced in the very beginning of the film. Yet, we must buy it and the two get away with the murder. (An honorable mention to Hume Cronyn's remarkable impersonation as the vile attorney). But wrongdoers can never be spared in the mainstream media at then, unexpectedly, one almost steps into the trap of a bolder and more wicked twist when they return to the beach and swim to their strength's extremity, however, it is only a bluff, the ending is more self-righteous and insignificantly self-serving. Right near the opening scenes, the glaring fake backgrounds almost haul me out of the context, some oldies are simply can not be taken too seriously with today's standards, thankfully, Lana Turner can pacify the sketchy slackness with her engrossing portrait of a woman at the end of her tether, she is good, but not in the same league as Stanwyck's excellence. By comparison OBSESSION, made 3 years before the Hollywood version, is an audacious maiden work which injects tremendous pathos into its two main roles with strenuous character- dissections assisted by onerous fieldwork. Visconti ditched its original title and transposed the story in a village near Ancona with authentic settings, an accepted trailblazer of Neorealismo movement and a tour-de-force of chiaroscuro finesse. A thirty-some Giovanna (Calamai) is the wife of a trattoria owner Giuseppe (the opera chanting Juan de Landa), distressed by Giuseppe's negligence and ill-treatment and disgusted by his obesity, her passion is instantaneously ignited when she meets Gino (a masculine-built and smoldering hot Girotti), a diddling young tramp in his 20s, they sleep together the very afternoon of the day, with a ballsy nuance, the advances are in fact instigated from the female part. For Gino, a mature and attractive woman is like an oasis in the desert, but he is much wiser (and more sensible) than Frank, when Giovanna bails on their elopement, he has the balls to leave her for good, gets going on with his fellow itinerant Lo Spagnolo "The Spanish" (a prematurely- deceased Elio Marcuzzo), this interlude is not in the novel, but Visconti never miss a chance to enhance the ambiguous rapport between men, and here, it has been teased out brilliantly with the side-by-side sitting which will appear again with a different undercurrent. But destiny has its own plans, Gino reunites with Giuseppe and Giovanna during a festival, and this time he has no strength to resist the temptation, after the festive cacophony, including a jolly episode of Giuseppe contests in a singing competition, en route to their trattoria, out of an act of passion, they fake a road accident and Giuseppe is killed. After that, without the distracting offshoots of courtroom drama and the conceited detectives or snooty lawyers, the film fixates on the aftermath where they have to live on with the consequences of their unforgivable deeds, especially for Gino, he is not the type of person who can hatch a murder scheme, he is seductive but never lethal. Yet, his love for Giovanna is too intense and it overpowers his soundness of judgment, Girotti proves he is not just a burly stallion, unlike Garfield, Gino's psychological fluctuations are potently presented, and his fling with a plain-looking prostitute Anita (Cristiani) indicates his unsophisticated nature.As for Giovanna, she is an ordinary wife who needs to break out her mundane life with a man she doesn't love, at the same time, she is afraid of uncertainty, especially under the WWII backwater, she should be content but she couldn't, especially when lust presides. Calamai is less glamorous but more impressive to exert her conversion from a sulky, manipulative housewife to a vulnerable and pitiful captive for the man she wholeheartedly loves. Their reconciliation is genuinely touching and the abrupt ending is much more plaintive and sob-inducing. There is alway a mixed feeling after a double bill because you cannot love or hate them equally, confessionally, Visconti's debut would not be so exceptional if I had not watched the Hollywood adaptation beforehand, peer comparison does have its direct effect, I should try it more often.