Really Surprised!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Spoilers ahead! I admit that I don't understand the title. As much as I tried and tried, I finally gave up. I do understand that Frank (John Garfield) and Cora (Lana Turner) attempted to commit one crime and succeeded at another without being convicted but then ironically "paid" for their crimes unexpectedly and accidentally, but what does that have to do with a postman ringing twice? My postman doesn't even ring once, and almost everything that he delivers is junk mail that gets immediately recycled before I open it. Maybe the original title "Bar BQ" should have stuck. Who knows?Aside from what I have read about the personal relationship between the two leads, which was confusing by itself, I didn't think that they were very good. I didn't believe that Garfield was emotionally involved in his part, and, sorry folks, I never appreciated Lana Turner as an actor. What was her speech affectation all about? Did you catch that? She sounded as if she had just arrived on the set from major dental surgery, and I found it very irritating. I'm glad that novelist James Cain believed that she was the perfect Cora. In an odd way, perhaps he is right because I didn't like the character that she played either.Although the film interested me at the beginning, my involvement faded fast. Cora's relationship with Nick (Cecil Kellaway) was totally unrealistic to me, and Nick's character completely annoyed me. Much of the time, I felt that I was watching a parody or a spoof of an actual drama because so many of the lines seemed so ridiculous to me. I believed that the cast felt that they were as ludicrous as I found them and delivered them accordingly with very little effort or interest. All of a sudden, out of the blue, Nick announces that he and Cora are departing for the wilds of northern Canada to care for his long lost sister. Can you picture Cora settling permanently not just in Regina or Saskatoon but in northern Sasketchewan? I could tell immediately that everyone was in trouble from that moment forward. The stage was set!I like Leon Ames alright, but if he said "laddy" just one more time I was going to smash my pc to the ceramic floor into a thousand pieces. Somehow, I managed to control myself in the "nick" of time. It just wouldn't have been worth the loss.

A young hunky drifter named Frank (John Garfield) comes across a restaurant/gas station run by old Nick (Cecil Kellaway) and his young wife Cora (Lana Turner). Frank and Cora fall in love and plan to run away together...but things don't turn out as planned.It's overlong and very convoluted at the end but this is a classic of film noir. There's undeniable sexual chemistry between Turner and Garfield and it comes off the screen. They really toned down the book but had to because of censorship issues at the time. The acting is great especially from Turner. Well worth seeing. Avoid the disasterous 1981 version at all costs.

I know that I'm not supposed to ask questions, and I know it was 1946, and Hollywood was playing with Film Noir, but there was just too much about this movie that made me want to yell "STOP ALREADY!!!"Yes, Lana Turner is absolutely breathtaking. She's so sexy in all of those white outfits, and those beautiful eyes and lips. Very sensuous.But do they really expect someone like her to fall for Cecil Kellaway and try to make it believable for the audience? And I'm sorry, but I just never thought that John Garfield was ever that good.Throughout watching this film all I could think of was how it reminded me of "Double Indemnity" (which in my opinion is a much better film, in every aspect).And the moral of the story about the postman? Ridiculous.Don't waste your time with this one, no matter what you read about it.

I think it is totally unnecessary polemics about the moral character of this film. POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE is tremendously tense and dramatic film, helped with great atmosphere and very good acting. Motives of adultery and crimes of passion are certainly the most thematically processed, but do not compromise the spirit of the novel on which the movie is based.In fact, nothing could be more sensational, besides the beautiful legs. A passionate story of an emotionally torn characters. Love, passion, murder and sentences. I am delighted with the atmosphere that prevails in and around the small diner. Everything important happens at night, of course, is no accident.The tension and passion grow in intervals. The climax is the murder. The violence in the film occurs suddenly and rapidly. John Garfield as Frank Chambers is a raw young rogue who wanders aimlessly and eventually falls into the trap. Garfield maintains a rhythm from start to finish. I think how he is naive character, actually know that he is in love, and vice versa.Lana Turner as Cora Smith It is quite good as frustrated beautiful woman who wants out of life to do something. Crime is not entirely her choice. She was more scared and hurt than determined. She was an ordinary woman trapped in a passion. No way femme fatale.It is obvious that crime does not pay. However, I see this as melodramatic demonstration where emotionally weak and clumsy people destroy themselves in their own sin.