JimBell Blog

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)—Most people pop in this video as a film noir, or see it in a film series called something like “Classics of Film Noir.” Then arguments rage about whether the film is truly classic or fails to measure up to Double Indemnity and others (see for example the IMDb site).  But these are secondary considerations. The primary question is “Is this a good movie?” or, somewhat differently, “Is it worth watching?”

Although I think the answers are yes, I readily admit that there are two broad reasons someone might not think this a good movie. First, it was made a half century ago, and some viewers will not be able to make the leap to allow the pace, camera work, and, particularly, the acting to work its magic. This is a common problem, highlighted when reading literature. The first time I encountered Chaucer’s 600-year old poetry I felt I was running in quicksand: The Wife of Bath begins by mentioning her five husbands, and then turns to the Bible:Herkne eek, lo, which a sharp word for the nones,Biside a welle, Jhesus, God and man,Spak in repreeve of the Samaritan: . . .I was lost. By the end of the summer, Chaucer was my second favourite writer. It took a lot of work learning a new version of English and learning about life in the 1300s. When someone says that Postman is too old fashioned for them to get into, I empathize. While that person may have trouble, lots of other folks—like me—find it easy to leap to a Californian roadside diner in the 1940s. 

Some viewers will have trouble with Postman for the same reason we all occasionally have trouble getting into movies—they  do not accept the basic premise. People find it easier to accept premises from their day and age. For example, “Everyone is corrupt, killing is the way to deal with things, and graphic violence is endlessly entertaining.” Thus almost no one criticizes the underlying assumptions of last year’s “best” film, The Departed. But accepting the basic premise of older films is often more difficult. Postman asks us to believe that a male and female can experience such a strong animal attraction to each other that it will survive insults, fighting, separation, murder, and anything else. Some viewers—e.g., maybe some of those who have not felt such a powerful attraction—will find this implausible or obnoxious or boring. Similarly, viewers who cannot tap into the 1940s film noir theme of fatalism will find they have trouble tapping into Postman. 

The film works because the plot is so well constructed. This should not come as a surprise, for the author of the novel, James M. Cain, also supplied the superb Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, and because the two screenwriters were veterans who knew what they were doing—Harry Ruskin had been writing regularly since 1930, and Niven Busch had been nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay in 1938. As soon as Frank Chambers (John Garfield) walks into the diner and lays eyes on Cora Smith (Lana Turner), he is smitten; she slams the door on him. But he is a good-looking, young guy who wants her, in contrast to her pudgy, old husband who takes her for granted. She falls for him. He wants her, and she wants him and a good life. They run away, but she quickly realizes that they have each other but little hope of a good life, so they return.  

After running did not work, Cora suggests an idea Frank had mentioned casually: killing old Frank Smith (Cecil Kellaway). Despite their differences, Frank is crazy for Cora, and Cora wants Frank as well as a good life. They are very clear about confirming their love for each other before entering into murder. Will they get away with electrocuting Nick in the bath tub? Even though the Production Code apparently stated that “no sympathies shall be aligned with those committing a crime,” we have mixed feeling about this situation. On the one hand, murder is a reprehensible “solution,” and Nick is an okay guy who does not deserve to die. On the other hand, Cora married him to keep the hordes of suitors at bay, she hoped the love would develop, but it never did, and she thinks it the biggest mistake of her life. Frank, who has drifted from one thing to another, seems to have found someone who, at least in his terms, is the real thing. We’re left wishing that Cora and Frank were smart enough to think of an alternative but hoping that if they do commit the murder, they get away with it.  

They botch the murder attempt, Nick lives, and Frank leaves. But Frank frequents a market where he knows Cora might show up. Nick shows up and insists that he come back to the diner. Cora is more than miffed when she sees Frank. Now what? Nick announces that he is selling the business and that he and Cora are moving to a small town in northern Canada to take care of his invalid sister, while Nick will manage the diner for the new owner. Cora objects, and she and Frank hatch a plot to have Nick drive off a cliff drunk. It works. 

But the aftermath of Nick’s murder is the opposite of what Cora and Frank expected. As James M. Cain said about his book, although it shows that love and murder can go together, it shows that no two people can successfully share the terrible secret of a murder. Cora and Frank are driven apart—unexpectedly but, at the same time, inevitably. Although the hatred and suspicion is palpable, they work to patch things up. Will Frank pass Cora’s test of love? They return to the beach where they were happiest, swim out so far that she cannot make it back, and he gallantly saves her life. Driving home, they kiss, Frank loses control of the car, and she dies. Ironically, Frank is convicted of her murder.  My point is not to retell the story but to show how from scene to scene we are kept wondering either or both: Will Frank and Cora get together? and Will they get away with murder?  

It is not helpful to look at The Postman Always Rings Twice as a classic film noir. It can lead to misunderstanding the movie and misevaluating its worth. Postman actually has few of the characteristics we associate with classic noir, but it has one which it develops so powerfully that we forget how much unlike a classic film noir the movie actually is. Unlike many noirs, Postman does not emphasize the burden of the past. Not surprisingly, there are none of the ubiquitous flashbacks showing events influencing the protagonists’ current behaviour. Nor does the movie feature a truth seeker searching for the answer amid the absurdity, chance, and corruption of the world. Yes, the DA is after the legal conviction, but he is mainly off screen, and, as he says near the end, he simply knew the truth all along. Nor is there a sense of the protagonists being hunted. No one is after Frank, and no one is after Cora, until a minor plot twist near the end threatens them briefly with blackmail. Nor does the action take place at night in the mean streets of the city. It largely happens in the country sun with the wide open road running passed the front door. 

Even a lot of the camera work is not particularly film noir. Some of it is. The classic shot when Frank and Cora meet is excellent subjective camera work (a film noir staple). Frank/we see a lip stick container roll across the diner floor, we look along the floor, up a long set up shapely legs, to a good looking woman applying make up in the doorway. But many shots which could have used noir lighting did not. For example, when Cora and Frank meet in the small room off the courtroom and Cora angrily gives her confession, we could have had subdued lighting or harsh light streaming through the window casting sharp-edged shadows everywhere. But no, it is shot in average light, just about the most standard way you could imagine to shoot the scene. The set design is not cluttered like the protagonist’s messy desk in Double Indemnity—papers everywhere, two cigarettes spilled out of a pack, maybe the bowl of a pipe sticking out of the shadows. Instead the set design is minimalist—clean table, clear walls, ordinary window—I believe to focus all our attention on the raw emotional conflict between Cora and Frank. 

And now I can hear howls of derision, but Cora is not a classic femme fatale. A classic femme fatale is a) sexy, and b) crafty. She employs these attributes to use a man who is dumber, more naive or less focused and determined than she is. While Cora is sexy, she does not coldly manipulate Frank. She and Frank fall in love!--at least what they would call love and what the movie tag line calls love: “Their love was a flame that destroyed!” As someone wisely noticed, Cora and Frank are not cold and manipulating but rather passionate flesh and blood, and none too smart. 

You may be thinking that I cannot possibly have my head screwed on straight, for everybody—and I mean everybody—sites Postman as a classic noir. So I’ll make one final and indirect argument. Although the people who made Postman were very talented film makers, they were not from the German expressionist tradition that produced so much classic film noir. Billy Wilder (from the Austro-Hungarian Empire) gave us Sunset Boulevard; Edgar Ulmer (Austro-Hungarian Empire) produced a string of movies with the classic noir look; Robert Siodmak (Germany) directed Criss Cross, The Killers, and others. In contrast, here is where the director and production team for Postman were born: California, California, California, Ohio, New York, Kansas, Ireland but raised in the US, and Illinois. And a talented team it was. I intended to list their Oscar nominations, but I don’t place that much faith in the Academy. For those who do, Edwin B. Willis, Set Designer, won 8 Academy Awards; Cedric Gibbons, Art Director, was nominated for, and won more, Academy Awards than any other art director in Hollywood history. But none of this is to say that any of the production team had any penchant for film noir.  

The major reason that knowledgable people see Postman as a film noir is because the classic noir theme of fatalism is ubiquitous and powerful. Frank states early on in a voice over, “Right then I should have walked out of that place. But she had me licked, and she knew it.” That’s Frank’s interpretation that she knew it, but there is no doubt his testosterone had him hooked. Lana Turner and John Garfield have chemistry. 

If you have trouble making the leap to the 1940s, or if you have trouble accepting the fatalistic premise of Postman, fine. But if you denigrate the movie because it does not live up to a list of film noir characteristics, you are erroneously imposing a set of criteria on the film which will erode the power of a movie well-plotted, well-acted, and well-made.