THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 382, 18 October 1946, Page 33

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

(M.G-M)

HERE are a few books and stories which Hollywood just cannot hope to film successfully, things being what they are with censorship codes

end even the conventions of common decency. The Decameron, the works of Rabelais, Ulysses, and Forever Amber are random cases in point, to which you could add fairly easily. But The Postman Always Rings Twice is a specific

example of "untouchability," and it is a f pity the producer did not accept the fact. He was licked before he started. I have read the James M. Cain novel twice, the first occasion some years ago, and again after seeing the film (fortunately it is a very short novel, a virtue whith the screen version does not possess). I think now as I did before that it is quite a remarkable book; in its way a brief masterpiece of unsparing | and unpleasant realism, written in a style which has often been imitated, but seldom with success. But the very qualities which made The Postman a novel worth rather more than passing notice are the qualities which put it outside the pale for screen transcription. I mean particularly its savage sexuality, its tense and sordid action, its crude dialogue, and its | refusal to sentimentalise even though | there is a good deal of sentiment behind some of the situations. The two leading characters, Cora and Frank, are about as amoral as a couple of monkeys. From what~can only be descfibed as motives of sheer lust, they decide to murder her husband, a _ restaurant-pro- prietor named Nick Papadakis;, the first attempt fails; the second succeeds; by legal chicanery they escape the gallows; and finally, after some further displays of violence and jealousy, they meet retribution just when the future begins to look rosy for them. At least this is a . story which holds your interest when you read it; indeed, the tension is often terrific, and the finale packs a real punch.

But except for a few short sequences, and particularly the legal passage-at-arms between Hume Cronyn and Leon Ames as Katz and Sackett (and even this | episode is remodelled to disadvantage), the film is simply an emasculated compromise which, of course, lacks even the crude honesty of the original. I suppose one might say that this is the fault of the material rather than of Tay Garnett, the director, or of John Garfield and | Lana Turner (as Cora and Frank) or-of Cecil Kellaway (as Nick). One might even admit that they do their best, Mr. Garfield to be tough, Miss Turner to be sultry, and Director Garnett to exploit, to the verge of censorship, the sexiness of their illicit relationship. But they were all/at fault in attempting the story in the first place, and more spé€cifically in trying, notably at the end, to give a gloss of sugary glamour to an unsavoury romance. The result of these cumulative errors and evasions is that a nasty story not only becomes nastier:

it also becomes boring.

G.

M.