Driven inexorably by lust and greed, their criminality is harshly disciplined, but only after being exploited for 100 minutes of pleasure, in which the spectator thrills with their desires and the suspense of whether they\u2019ll consummate their affair and murderous intentions, and whether they\u2019ll be caught when they do. (According to Garfield biographer Robert Nott, the stars\u2019 onscreen affair was consummated off-screen too.) There is a heady mix of tragic fatalism, moral relativism, and social criticism, the suggestion that capitalism perverts human souls. \u201cEverything went dark,\u201d says the lovers\u2019 attempted murder victim. Describing his concussion, he might as well be describing the advent of noir<\/em>, with its profound cynicism about the \u201cAmerican Way,\u201d so ballyhooed during the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Postman Always Rings Twice <\/em>is representative early noir<\/em> despite the deceptive brightness of its setting: the hill country outside Los Angeles. The film opens on Frank Chambers (Garfield), his fate overdetermined by that surname, his confessional voiceover, and the presence of The Law \u2013 in the form of a district attorney, with whom Frank has hitched a ride, and a motorcycle cop (both will reappear later). For good measure, director Tay Garnett also gives us a \u201cMan Wanted\u201d sign, literally advertising a job at the Twin Oaks filling station\/lunch counter and figuratively forecasting Frank\u2019s destiny, as does the film\u2019s foreboding if cryptic title. A restless wanderer, Frank is about to be trapped, which we are told\u2014in typical noir<\/em> fashion\u2014by so many striated shadows and by the entrance of Cora Smith (Turner), who grabs Frank by the gaze (with a typical POV shot of her high-heeled gams) and never lets go.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cora is a noir<\/em> \u201cspider woman\u201d par excellence (to use Janey Place\u2019s term). Her unnatural phallic power is symbolized in lipsticks (intentionally dropped) and cigarettes (self-lit), her unnatural narcissism\u2014at odds with gender norms dictating female subordination of will\u2014symbolized by the mirror she uses to gaze at her own weaponized attractiveness. Like the sunny setting, the total whiteness of Cora\u2019s hair and wardrobe (Garnett\u2019s inspired brainchild) is a ruse. No innocent bride, Cora is white-hot, like the electric current that kills the cat dumb enough to walk into a fuse box. Trapped herself in marriage to a much older man, the Twin Oaks\u2019 owner Nick (Cecil Kellaway), who keeps her working in the kitchen and fails to satisfy her sexually and financially, Cora will lure Frank into setting her free, regardless of the cost to him. Ambitious to \u201camount to something\u201d and an increasingly skilled deceiver, she talks Frank into conspiring to murder Nick. Successful the second time around, at one hour into the film, the lovers spend the rest of it turning against, and then towards, each other\u2014lather, rinse, repeat\u2014until Karma and The Law punish them both, per the strictures of the Production Code. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This ending is also dictated by Cain\u2019s novel, as is much of the film\u2019s over-stuffed plot, more allegiant to its literary source than later postwar noirs<\/em>, which would become more specifically cinematic. Part of this is attributable to noir<\/em>\u2019s incipiency, but another part is deference to Cain and his novel\u2019s bestselling status, one of three to be adapted into early noir<\/em>s, along with Mildred Pierce<\/em><\/a> and Double Indemnity<\/em>. Though MGM bought the rights to Postman <\/em>in 1934, the studio delayed its adaptation for over a decade due to the Breen Office\u2019s admonitions that the story was \u201cunwholesome and thoroughly objectionable.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, the novel is racy, detailing (how to commit) murder and (sadomasochistic) adulterous sex \u2013 along with various other crimes and crossings of geographical (read: moral) borders. In the novel, Frank regularly roams to Mexico and Nick (Papadakis, not Smith) is a thickly-accented Greek immigrant. Finally daring to adapt it, MGM got the push it needed with the success of Paramount\u2019s Double Indemnity<\/em> in 1944, which proved Cain\u2019s potboilers could pass muster with the censors and sell at the box office. That said, Postman\u2019s <\/em>sexual heat would have to be tempered, waiting thirty-five years to be restored to original strength (and then some) in the 1981 adaptation written by David Mamet, directed by Bob Rafelson, starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For the iconography of postwar noir, though, the 1946 film version can\u2019t be beat. Turner\u2019s stark platinum bob, of course, is seared into cinematic history. But even more marvelous is her ambiguous performance. She keeps the viewer tantalizingly unsure: Is Cora\u2019s Iowa-bred sweetness and affection for Frank genuine or feigned, and does she even know the difference? And while Turner\u2019s own top-billed glamour sometimes gets in the way of playing Cora docile, the same glamour enhances the film\u2019s moral relativism: the marital \u2018enslavement\u2019 of this goddess to a fat old drunk (who wants to make her his paralyzed sister\u2019s nurse) seems the real crime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Her co-star Garfield is pitch-perfect as the hardboiled anti-hero, only tough on the outside, soft and vulnerable at his core. (Garfield\u2019s tragic biography\u2014persecuted under the Hollywood Red Scare and dead of a heart attack by age 39\u2014only heightens this effect). Despite his posturing, Frank proves no match for Cora. Though he is the film\u2019s narrator, she increasingly out-talks him, exceeding his use of language and his (and the film\u2019s) attempts to contain her as erotic object\u2014a transgression of gender norms typical of noir. A \u201chell-cat\u201d (Cain\u2019s words), Cora strains against domestication, thus enacting (and thereby titillating) postwar anxieties about sexually and financially liberated women (Rosie the Riveters who\u2019ve found they like riveting just fine). In contrast to Frank\u2019s emasculation is Cora\u2019s authoritative attorney, Arthur Keats (Hume Cronyn). Keats\u2019 refrain is \u201cI\u2019m handling it,\u201d and he certainly does handle Cora: \u201cListen, my girl,\u201d he chastises her, \u201cFrom now on, you speak only when you\u2019re spoken to.\u201d Real men keep their hell-cats on a leash, I guess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, grab some popcorn, and a big grain of salt for the outdated gender politics. This film has lasted, but the summer won\u2019t.\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/postman2-1024x576.jpg\")
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