The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Film: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Stars: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn
Director: Tay Garnett
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1946, Lana Turner would have been forgiven for being tired of her career.  She had been a star at MGM for years at this point, and had gone a long way from where we saw her in Love Finds Andy Hardy last week.  Turner, who collected husbands with the frequency people usually only reserve for birthdays & filing their taxes, had been married three times during her early years at MGM, and given birth to her only child, Cheryl.  Her film work was less inspired, though.  She starred opposite major leading men of the era (Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, & James Stewart), to name a few, but with the exception of 1942's Johnny Eager, none of them are well-remembered today, and it's probable that Turner herself wouldn't be either were it not for today's film, which started an entirely new career for Turner as a more serious actress.  Today, we go to the film noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows drifter Frank Chambers (Garfield), a man who shows up one day at a gas station where he meets a gruff old drunk Nick (Kellaway), who is married to an alarmingly beautiful, much younger woman Cora (Turner).  Cora and Frank, away from Nick's drunken gaze, start a passionate love affair that results in them eventually wanting to kill Nick.  The two have a half-hearted attempt that goes awry when a cat knocks out the power, scaring Cora from murdering her husband and just injuring him.  Nick doesn't remember the attack, but this puts them in the crosshairs of the law.  Despite this, they go ahead and actually kill Nick, trying to make it look like a traffic accident but are discovered by a district attorney who arrests Cora for both Nick's death and for attempting to kill Frank (who is injured in the car accident).  Her sleazy lawyer (Cronyn) manages to trick her into signing a confession, but doesn't give it to the DA, and instead just proves to her that she's capable of turning on Frank (as he has already done with her).  She get off on a technicality, getting manslaughter (that turns into probation), and the two continue living together, eventually marrying to try and ebb simmering gossip about the two, but they despise one another.  The two both seem like they're on the brink of killing one another, and then Cora has a change of heart, giving Frank the opportunity to let her drown, but he doesn't, and they are about to start a new, cooler life together when a car accident (a real one this time) results in Cora dying, and Frank being charged with her murder.  Even though he's innocent this time, he accepts that he was guilty of murdering Nick, and this is a fitting punishment, especially without the woman he loved.

The film, as you can tell, is thickly-plotted (as is the wont of most noir, where body counts are high & the betrayal is omnipresent).  However, up until the last ten minutes or so, you won't give a damn because Postman is glorious.  It's seedy, ruthless, and sexy-as-hell.  Turner & Garfield have a smoldering chemistry that works miracles onscreen, and while Kellaway is miscast (you never really understand why Cora married such a louse in the first place or why she doesn't particularly like him since he seems like he's been like this forever), Cronyn is superb and nasty in the supporting role.  If this was the type of film that got Oscar nominations, he would have been on the Academy's shortlist for sure (I suspect he'll be on mine).

The ending I didn't love.  I have not read the classic novel by James M. Cain (I'll probably give it a couple of years before I do so that it feels at least a little new & fresh), so I don't know if the ending is that much different from the film's, but I don't entirely buy that Cora, as portrayed here, would have forgiven Frank, and it feels like a rushed ending after so much cruelty and plotting back-and-forth.  Shouldn't Cora, always ready with the upper-hand (or the world ready to give it to her) have lived through the finale, or at least have run off with Cronyn's lawyer, tricking Frank into taking the fall for a murder that didn't happen?  I guess I just kept hoping we'd found out she made it, as it's hard to imagine a car accident would have felled such a spirit.

That's because Turner is amazing in Postman.  I've seen a few of Lana Turner's movies, including her Oscar-nominated work in Peyton Place, and I have to say-she's never been better.  We don't need the saucy melodrama of Turner's real life to sell this movie-it's all just a great performance from an actress at the top of her field.  Turner has never looked more radiant, and never been more sexy.  The femme fatale trope has been a savior for other actresses, and the downfall of more still, but Turner not only gives us a great performance, it's a genre-topping one.  She quickly joins the ranks of Jane Greer in Out of the Past or Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place as one of the better femme fatales in the genre.  It's no wonder MGM saw this performance and thought, "maybe we're under-serving this actress."  Next week, we'll see what happens when Turner gets a more traditionally "awards bait" role as she encounters one of the giant epics of 1947.