The Postman Always Rings Twice | |
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Directed by | Bob Rafelson |
Screenplay by | David Mamet |
Based on | The Postman Always Rings Twice 1934 novel by James M. Cain |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Sven Nykvist |
Edited by | Graeme Clifford |
Music by | Michael Small |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | |
Release date |
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Running time | 123 minutes [1] |
Country | United States [1] |
Language | English |
Budget | $12 million [2] |
Box office | $44.2 million [3] |
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1981 American neo-noir [4] erotic thriller film directed by Bob Rafelson and written by David Mamet (in his screenwriting debut). Starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, it is the fourth adaptation of the 1934 novel by James M. Cain. The film was shot in Santa Barbara, California.
Frank Chambers (Jack Nicholson), a drifter, stops for a meal at a diner outside Depression-era Los Angeles and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora Smith (Jessica Lange), and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis (John Colicos), a hardworking but unimaginative immigrant from Greece.
Frank and Cora begin an affair soon after they meet. Cora is tired of her situation, married to an older man she does not love and working at a diner that she wishes to own and improve. She and Frank scheme to murder Nick to start a new life together without her losing the diner. Their first attempt at the murder is a failure, but they succeed with their second attempt.
The local prosecutor suspects what has actually occurred but does not have enough evidence to prove it. As a tactic intended to get Cora and Frank to turn on one another, he tries only Cora for the crime. Although they do turn on each other, a clever ploy from Cora's lawyer, Katz (Michael Lerner), prevents her full confession from coming into the hands of the prosecutor. With the tactic having failed to generate any new evidence for the prosecution, Cora benefits from a deal in which she pleads guilty to manslaughter and is sentenced to probation.
Months later, Frank has an affair with Madge Gorland (Anjelica Huston) while Cora is out of town. When Cora returns, she tells Frank she is pregnant. That night, Katz's assistant, Kennedy (John P. Ryan), appears at their door and threatens to expose them unless they give him $10,000. Enraged, Frank beats Kennedy up and strong-arms him into giving up the evidence against them.
When Frank returns, he finds that Madge has been to see Cora, who threatens to turn him in. They eventually patch together their tumultuous relationship and now plan for a future together. However, on the way back after having been married, Cora dies in a car accident while Frank is driving. Frank weeps over Cora's body.
On May 14, 2012, Intrada Records released Michael Small's complete score for the first time..
The film was screened out of competition at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. [6] Upon release, the film was poorly received by many critics, who felt that the remake of the 1946 film of the same name was wasted. They also believed the ending was "very weak" compared to the original film. They also criticized that the meaning of the title is not explained in the remake, which led to confusion among viewers. Jack Nicholson later said "If you ran a question through this industry about The Postman Always Rings Twice, most people would surmise that it wasn't successful. That is not true. I know it made money, because I received overages, so it must've grossed about as much as Chinatown and much more than Carnal Knowledge . But people are anxious to disqualify it." [7]
The film has since been received more favorably; it scores a 79% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 11 positive reviews and three negative. Kerry Segrave and Linda Martin praised the "charged chemistry" between Nicholson and Lange, and stated that Nicholson admitted that he was smitten with his co-star, remarking that she was a "big consensus movie sex bomb". [8] The film was nominated by the American Film Institute in 2002 for the AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions list. [9]
The star of the 1946 version, Lana Turner, did not watch the remake, but said she had seen advertisements and blurbs on television that made her sick: she resented how the studio "turned it into such pornographic trash". [10]
Warner Bros. currently holds the rights to the film. Turner Entertainment Co. currently holds only the 1946 version (as part of the pre-May 1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library), not the second adaptation (since Lorimar produced this film), but Warner Bros. owns both films.
Julia Jean "Lana" Turner was an American actress. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid American actresses and one of MGM's biggest stars, with her films earning approximately one billion dollars in 2024 currency for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon due to her glamourous persona and a screen legend of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She was nominated for numerous awards.
James Mallahan Cain was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as a progenitor of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction.
Anjelica Huston is an American actress, director and model known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters. She has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and six Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2010, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by American writer James M. Cain. The novel was successful and notorious upon publication. It is considered one of the most outstanding crime novels of the 20th century. The novel's mix of sexuality and violence was startling in its time and caused it to be banned in Boston.
Neo-noir is a revival of film noir, a genre that had originally flourished during and after World War II in the United States—roughly from 1940 to 1960. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the term "neo-noir" surged in popularity, fueled by movies such as Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice, Brian De Palma's Blow Out, and Martin Scorsese's After Hours. The French term film noir translates literally to English as "black film", indicating sinister stories often presented in a shadowy cinematographic style. Neo-noir has a similar style but with updated themes, content, style, and visual elements.
Nobody Lives Forever is a 1946 American crime film noir directed by Jean Negulesco and based on the novel I Wasn't Born Yesterday by W. R. Burnett. It stars John Garfield and Geraldine Fitzgerald and features Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Coulouris and George Tobias.
Robert Jay Rafelson was an American film director, writer and producer. He is regarded as one of the key figures in the founding of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Among his best-known films as a director include those made as part of the company he co-founded, Raybert/BBS Productions, Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) as well as acclaimed later films, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Mountains of the Moon (1990). Other films he produced as part of BBS include two of the most significant films of the era, Easy Rider (1969) and The Last Picture Show (1971). Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show were all chosen for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. He was also one of the creators of the pop group and TV series The Monkees with BBS partner Bert Schneider. His first wife was the production designer Toby Carr Rafelson.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1946 American film noir directed by Tay Garnett and starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, and Cecil Kellaway. It is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by James M. Cain. This adaptation of the novel also features Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames and Audrey Totter. The musical score was written by George Bassman and Erich Zeisl.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1982 opera with a libretto written by Colin Graham and music by Stephen Paulus, based on the 1934 novel by James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Madame Bovary is a 1949 American romantic drama, a film adaptation of the classic 1857 novel of the same name by Gustave Flaubert. It stars Jennifer Jones, James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, Alf Kjellin, Gene Lockhart, Frank Allenby and Gladys Cooper.
Matthew Bourne's The Car Man is a dance production by British choreographer Matthew Bourne. It previewed for the first time on Tuesday, May 16, 2000, at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, England, and was subsequently staged at the Old Vic in London in September of that year.
Lorna Doone is a 1922 American silent drama film based upon Richard Doddridge Blackmore's 1869 novel of the same name. Directed by French director Maurice Tourneur in the United States, the film starred Madge Bellamy and John Bowers.
The Last Turning is a 1939 French film noir directed by Pierre Chenal and starring Fernand Gravey, Corinne Luchaire and Michel Simon. It was shot at the Joinville Studios in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director Georges Wakhévitch. The screenplay was written by Charles Spaak and Henri Torrès, based on the 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. It was the first screen adaptation of the novel followed by the 1943 film Ossessione and The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1946.
Piccadilly Jim is a 1936 American romantic comedy film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Madge Evans and Billie Burke. The film is based on the 1917 novel Piccadilly Jim written by P. G. Wodehouse.
Pickup is a 1951 American low-budget film noir starring Hugo Haas, Beverly Michaels, Allan Nixon and Howland Chamberlain. Written and directed by Haas, a Czech actor and filmmaker, it was his first American film behind the camera. Haas, a refugee from German-occupied Europe, went on to make a series of gloomy noirs about doomed middle-aged men led astray by younger femmes fatales.
The Postman Always Rings Twice may mean:
The depictions of women in film noir come in a range of archetypes and stock characters, including the alluring femme fatale. A femme fatale, is a prevalent and indicating theme to the style of film noir.
Since her rise to fame in the 1940s, American film actress Lana Turner (1921–1995) has appeared and been referenced in numerous works across literature, film, art, and music. Her glamorous persona and publicized personal troubles have contributed to her recurring prevalence in popular culture.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a play by James M. Cain, based on his best-selling 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. The work was first performed at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City in 1936. The play saw a brief revival in 1953.
Galatea is a romance novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1953. The story alludes to the mythological Galatea in which the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with the ivory figure of a woman he has crafted. In Cain’s modernized version of the Greek legend, an overweight woman is transfigured through a program of weight reduction into a goddess-like beauty.