Word: postman
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...Postman Always Rings Twice (MGM) and Gilda (Columbia...
Back in 1934 James M. Cain wrote an exciting noval about passion, murder, a bum, and a girl who "really wasn't any raving beauty" but who had a sulky look to her. Now "The Postman Always Rings Twice" is here in the movies, with sheer quantity of kisses pinch-hitting for passion and Lana Turner for the sulky, Mexican-looking woman. Murder and the bum more nearly receive their due, the latter at the hands of John Garfield, but in no way does the picture generate the speed and intensity of the book...
Like "Double Indemnity" (also based on a Cain yarn), "Postman" involves the extra-curricular love affair of a married woman, the murder of the husband by wife and lover, and the net of justice that ensnares them. But where Barbara Stanwyck clearly was a woman powerless in the grip of passion, Lana Turner plays a peculiarly ill-defined character, driven in conflicting directions by muddled motives. Nor is Garfield, while more suitably cast, given a better organized role. The smaller parts are much neater; Cecil Kellaway as the husband and Hume Cronyn, as a lawyer who gets Miss Turner...
Garfield and Turner have done as much for this hodge-podge as any two mis-cast screensters can accomplish in one film. "Postman," if it hadn't been so thoroughly "improved" between story and script, would have come closer to acclaim as a first-rate movie...
...Postman Always Rings Twice, at Loew's State and Orpheum. M-G-M's treatment of James M. Cain's novel about ham-and-eggs sex in California...