The Postman Always Rings (Twice)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946) Drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) blows in on the Santa Ana wind* and gets picked up along the road by a man called Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), and gets himself dropped off at a local diner-slash-service station called "Twin Oaks" run by a genial old fellow named Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), who has a sign out front that indicates he could use a little help around the place. Frank can use the work, but he's not sure about it until he gets a look at the benefits, when he follows a fallen lipstick across the diner floor and sees Nick's much younger wife, Cora (Lana Turner), who shows up in a midriff-baring white two-piece number that one presumes she doesn't normally wear at job interviews for mechanics. With Nick, he's a bit of toady, but with Cora, it's a sparring match where he always ends up the loser. "The best way to get my husband to fire you is to not do what I tell you to do," she tells him once he's off work the first day. When he grabs her in a clinch later, she just fixes her lipstick and walks away...slowly. She's funny that way.

But Frank is confident. "I can sell anything to anybody," he brags. "That's what you think," she scoffs. But, a moonlight swim (with Nick's approval) starts to get Cora in a buying mood. And when Nick goes away to Los Angeles, Frank seizes his chance—there's a lovely moment when, he's tending the dining bar with one lone customer between him and trying to make his move on Cora and he stares the poor sap down until he's so uncomfortable he leaves...with a tip—closing the diner for business and giving his full attention to Cora. She finally answers the question that's nagged at him—why marry Nick? She tells him that since the time she was 14, she had to fight off a lot of guys—all of them—until she met Nick, with a ring and a proposal. "And you retired," he says. "The undefeated champ." "Not 100% undefeated," she says. And that is that.

Soon after they begin their affair—hours after, in fact, which makes you wonder if they had enough time to have an affair—they run off together. But, as Nash has the only available car, they end up bumming rides to get away, and that's just honest-to-goodness not good enough for Cora (even though it may be good enough for Frank. *CONFLICT ALERT* She doesn't want to start out their life together as bums...like Frank. Besides, if she just up and leaves, all the work she put into Twin Oaks will go waste, as Nick would surely keep it in a divorce. So, the two go to plan "B" by dialing "M" for murder: they decide that Cora will get to keep Twin Oaks if they kill Nick. Well, at least kill Nick and get away with it.

And so, they hoof it back to Twin Oaks, waiting for Nick to come back. He does, conveniently weaving from from too much drink in the city, but not conveniently enough that he's killed drunk-driving all the way from Los Angeles. The plan is for Cora to clobber him in the bath-tub, so he falls and drowns. But, Fate, in the form of passing cars, busy-body motorcycle cops, and a darn cat manage to escalate the dread and foil the plot. Nash only get conked on the head by Cora, but a black-out-by-cat keeps the plot from being completed, and he ends up in the hospital, undrowned, with no memory of it happening at all. The speculation is that it's from his "fall" in the bathtub, but I'd make a case for him being "so drunk last night."

When Nick comes back to Twin Oaks, he decides to sell the place and move him and Cora to Canada with his sister, and that's something that Cora just won't do—so to prevent it, Frank and Cora stage a car accident, hitting Nick over the head—again—and the crash to explain the injuries that killed him.

Nick does die, and Frank is injured, but the District Attorney trying the case is the same Kyle Sackett who drove Frank into town, and, thinking that it's all too coincidental, separates the two lovers and gets a statement from Frank when he only files charges against her. The two turn on each other, and it's only through the machinations of Cora's lawyer (Hume Cronyn) that she only gets a manslaughter charge for being the driver of the vehicle.

Cain's sordid little story is given a veneer of M-G-M glamour throughout, making the affair between Frank and Cora much more romantic than it should be—after all, chicanery and murder are what bring the two together and what will ultimately drive a wedge between them. Everything looks clean and tidy and Frank is one of those lucky mechanics for whom grease never seems to stick, not even under his fingernails. Turner is always photographed in the best possible light and a shimmering gauze in close-up's. One may almost get the impression they're innocent of murder or deception. But, Cain's story ultimately catches up to them and anything illusory becomes tragic reality, when Fate comes a-knocking again and disturbs any complacent slumber and the dreams it may contain. The postman will always ring twice, just to shatter any misconceptions.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981) Cain's story was remade in 1981 with no pretensions by playwright (and ultimately director) David Mamet (his first screenplay), who takes the romance out of it, and with the more low-key direction of Bob Rafelson, makes the circumstances a lot more tawdry. The major difference is that the 1946 M-G-M version is a "PG" version, slouching towards a "PG-13" (if such a thing existed at the time), whereas the 1981 Warner Bros. version is a tumescent "R," where the participants are desperate people, unattractive in body or spirit. The disparities between the people involved are seen in a much harsher light. The novel's depiction of Nick Papadakis ("The Greek") is brought out with more emphasis on his ethnicity and the casting of John Colicos makes one wonder why this version's Cora—in the depiction of Jessica Lange—would "settle" for this particular man for any reason other than being sold to him or by any others means beyond some kind of blackmail.

One even wonders why she would find Jack Nicholson's drifter a more attractive alternative. Not that the actors' ages make that much of a difference—Nicholson was only 43 at the time of filming; Lange was 31. But, Nicholson was only 10 years younger than Colicos, and although a great actor and (sure) a star, he was beginning to get doughy, his hair thinning, and progressing from his younger, angular good looks to a young middle-age. Would a beauty like Lange's Cora risk everything for him? One wonders.

The story proceeds the same, but back in Cain's original era of the Depression years: Drifter. Twin Oaks. Older husband. Male lust. Female need. Clinch. Affair. Murder. Ring-ring. But, there's nothing romantic about the Frank-Cora affair in this one. The two start out just as bitchy as the 1946 version, but when Nick leaves town, there's no embrace and kiss—it's a lunging, violent sex-scene that starts out as a rape, with the major indication that Cora wants it as badly as Frank does ("Come on!") is she clears the bread-table—loaves, dough, bread-knife, flour (one worries about yeast infections)—with a clumsy wave of her arms and it's a big dusty fumble with a lot of flailing and almost comical moans of exertion. 

Ya know...like sex turned out to be rather than what you imagined...

But, it's not enough that Rafelson and Mamet strip away the romantic veneer that played such a part of the M-G-M version, they've also added a sado-masochistic kink to the affair, with a lot of roughage and slapping—Cora spits in Frank's face at one point and there's a disgusted curl to her lip when she says "You're scum, Frank. I knew that when I met you. You'll never change." This is "trading up?"

One gets the impression that this is what she wants and it's what she thinks she deserves and is resigned to her fate. She's certainly not as ambitious as Turner's Cora. She just "settles" for slightly higher increments. And Nicholson's Frank isn't a go-getter drifter, he's just a snake, who'll turn any situation to his advantage. It does make his turning on Cora once Nick is killed a bit more understandable, psychologically. He thinks he's the master of his fate, and a white trash Master of the Universe, who, if he knew about Ayn Rand, would cling to objectivism as an excuse for what is basically selfish self-interest. Maybe he and Cora have more in common than originally thought.

It made me think less of a human drama than of zoology—we're dealing with much more primal instincts that crouch deep in our alligator brains. Cora calls Frank an animal when she sees him drinking milk out of a bottle instead of a glass and one can see their relationship as more bestial—the male lion lords it over everybody while the female is the more practical of the sexes. But, it's a completely different power dynamic than from the '46 version, which has more to do with entymology. In that one, Cora is the queen bee, giving the illusion that the men are more than mere drones...and potential victims. 

"Aren't we ambitious?" Garfield's Frank cracks at Turner's Cora when she talks about her plans for Twin Oaks. Of course she is, and at a level far higher than the men she encounters. And higher than Lange's Cora in the Mamet-Rafelson version.

But, Nature is red in tooth and claw. And, far more powerful than the machinations that preoccupy the creatures that plan and scheme and rut in The Postman Always Rings Twice. It can unravel any scheme that chooses to beat Fate.

* Raymond Chandler wrote about the desert winds that blew into Los Angeles: "On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

The Lady in the Lake

Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) Call it an experiment that fails—but a noble try.  Bob Montgomery took his opportunity to make a low-budget pot-boiler of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe mystery and take it as close to the source as he could...in spirit, anyway. Taking Chandler's first-person narration-style and translating it into cinematic terms. Instead of reading inside Marlowe's head, we're seeing out of his eye-sockets—I didn't know Marlowe was monocular. Nor did I know he was borderline schizophrenic—with cooing voices in the background, passing for a dramatic score (at least it's organic).

Chandler hated this one. He'd written his own screenplay adaptation (that wasn't used) and thought the POV work...didn't work. It doesn't, really. In fact, it's creepy. We, the audience, are constantly being talked to directly, with Marlowe's replies in voice-over—but because we don't see him, those replies are so "on-the-nose" as to be bluntly obvious. In a way, this direct method robs us of actually seeing Marlowe's thoughts, playing across the face of the actor portraying him. No, Marlowe has to say everything on his mind, making him the lamest of detectives—he's always telling people of his suspicions of them. Nice detective work, there, shamus.

But, it does follow the story...in the same way a stage play might follow it. We're kinda "stuck" inside Marlowe's head, and any investigation—the thing that distinguishes this story in the Marlowe canon is that it takes him out of L.A. But, we never get out of rooms. We lose some characters, and the bigger shocks (the discovery of "the lady in the lake," for instance, which they probably couldn't show as it's pretty gruesome in the book) are talked about happening off-camera. Nope. Everybody's standing around talking to each other...actually they're standing around talking to us.

Like I said, creepy.

It also kills any momentum. Because the camera is the only thing that has any action to it. We see what he sees, following babes—rather obviously—every door-knob that is reached for (how exciting!), and only see our hero in the mirror. It doesn't help the actors, either. Montgomery might have been a great Marlowe—we just don't see it. And poor Audrey Totter—her character doesn't even make any sense. She whip-saws between emotions in a bi-polar performance, that when Marlowe's supposed to trust her, you just don't buy it...or buy him for doing it. The technique works against everything here. The only one who adapts well to it is Lloyd Nolan, but he'd already done an adaptation of Chandler's "The High Window" as the Marlowe stand-in, and already had the "cracking wise" patter down cold.

The thing is, POV can work. It works to a certain extent in Dark Passage, and  Jonathan Demme employed it amazingly well—and sparingly—in The Silence of the Lambs, where audience identification is only enhanced by our seeing the direct play of emotions across faces. Montgomery was an actor, and a good one, so it's amazing that he would choose to do this experiment rather than trust his own craft; it's a hard lesson to learn, but an easy one when you think about it—you can tell an audience anything you like, but to use the medium of movies to its best extent—you should show them.

Robert Montgomery as Phillip Marlowe in the only way we see him
(except when addressing the audience)—in a mirror. 

The History of John Ford: They Were Expendable

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots).

In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

They Were Expendable (John Ford, Robert Montgomery, 1945) First things first: John Ford set up and shot the vast majority of They Were Expendable. He was adjusting a light on an elevated platform when he fell off of it, breaking his right leg. When a concerned M-G-M exec called Ford at the Florida hospital—they shot in Key Biscayne Florida—where he was in traction and asked when he was coming back to work, Ford barked back that he wasn't, that Montgomery was going to finish the picture. "First I've heard of it," Montgomery remembers thinking when he heard Ford say it (top-liners Montgomery and John Wayne drove him to the hospital at his insistence). Montgomery who had jitters about acting in the picture after serving in the Navy for 4 years, knew it wasn't going to be tough—all Ford had left were some close-up's of things already shot and he proceeded to "just think like Ford" and finished it up, except for the last scene which Ford directed after leaving his hospital bed against doctor's orders. So, that's why the co-directing notice at the top.

The movie didn't do well at the box-office; in 1945, when it was released right after V-J Day, movie-goers had become bored with the saturation of war movies in the theaters. And They Were Expendable told about the dark days of the Pacific War—after Pearl Harbor but before Midway and just after the evacuation of the Philipines—when things didn't look so positive. It might have been a case of battle-footage fatigue; the book on which it's based—"They Were Expendable" by William L. White—was a bestseller, and those who didn't buy the book might have read portions of it in Reader's Digest and Life Magazine. Plus, at the time of the book's events, the Japanese Navy was handing the Allied effort a severe whipping. Except for scenes where the crews' PT Boats achieve some sinkings in their few skirmishes with the Japanese Navy and the successful evacuation of MacArthur and his family, the command of Lt. John Brickley (Montgomery, based on Lt. John Bulkeley who received the Medal of Honor for his service) takes it from all sides: the Japanese Navy, which picks off the individual ships one by one, whittling their numbers and crews, and his own Navy that considers the small vessels capable of messenger duty and nothing more. 

The situation is frustrating enough that Lt. J.G. "Rusty" Ryan (Wayne) wants to transfer to destroyer duty and away from skippering "high-powered canoes", but keeps getting turned down. There's no doubting his devotion, though; during one run, he's injured but refuses medical care until he's finally hospitalized with blood poisoning, but only after he's been ordered to by "Brick." This does not sit well with "Rusty" in creasing his obstinacy, which doesn't ingratiate him with the hospital staff. Only one Army nurse, Sandy Davyss (Donna Reed)—after getting the brusque end of Ryan's frustrations—starts to break through his crust and the two begin an awkward often-interrupted romance.

Cribbing any munitions they can and keeping the PT boats together with spit and bailing wire, the boats manage to do some damage, but, at best, it's a stalling game, trying to keep Japanese forces from advancing, while the Navy rebuilds its fleet and repairs their carriers in the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. But, it's merely staving off the inevitable as more men die and more island terrain gets occupied, getting ever closer to their positions.

But, it becomes clear that the inevitable cannot be forestalled. Evacuation of all the Navy men is impossible, and those that can fight are turned over to the infantry, to face death or capture. Brickley and Ryan are two of the few who are shipped off for reassignment of training and building more PT boats, guiltily leaving their commands to their fates.

It's an unconventional war movie—certainly serving its propaganda purposes showing the spirit of the Naval forces despite the merciless conditions (Ford was right in the middle of his duties overseeing films for the Navy as part of the war effort and his experiences on Midway Island during that battle informed a lot of the work on this film), but it's completely atypical for its time in that it is not a story with the confidence of a victorious ending. They Were Expendable—despite being released after the war's end with an Allied victory—shows the U.S. Navy still reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack and trying to "make-do" in any way it can, the top brass, used to its aircraft carriers and destroyers at the ready, having to regroup and re-think its strategy (and being none too quick about it) with further attacks and certain capture right over the horizon for the forces stationed there. Any victories are piece-meal and certainly not decisive in the overall scheme of things. And we see the men go from "spit-and-polish" regimentation to looking like bedraggled castaways, uniformity going by the wayside in its efforts just to survive.

Soon, it is difficult to tell Navy from Army or Marines, their PT boats taken away or having to be abandoned, the sailors transformed to infantry and ground troops, because that is what it takes to survive, if survive is what they hope to do in a war-zone. Ultimately, Brickley has to even abandon his men to their fates because...orders. It doesn't sit well with him, eats at him even if he does all he can to have them prepared on that small little island, but it ties in with the whole theme of the film of service...and sacrifice. With more sacrifices to come.

But, it's strange to put this in the "History" of John Ford, although it's essential that it be there. The events were only a couple years old when the film was made, but given Ford's time working for the OSS—especially in his time on Midway just before the attack—he had a feel for how Navy-men worked, spent their time waiting, and how they dealt with stress...or didn't deal with it, it is a document of the American history that Ford was starting to specialize in, even as it was being made. Ford's picture is sentimentalized a bit (it IS Ford, after all), but with its interrupted romance, the military conflict with no resolution, and lives left in the balance, it is also one of his most melancholy films, far from a Hollywood standard crowd-pleaser, let alone a gung-ho war-film, so it was far more unconventional and rougher than most American movie-goers were used to.* 

It is also one of his best films, done on a tight schedule, but still with the sensitivity and artistry that Ford—at his best—could command. It is essential viewing for anyone interested in John Ford and the History of John Ford.

Ford put everybody's rank in the service in the credits, both out of pride
and to get a dig at John Wayne and Ward Bond, who did not serve.
Ford, Wayne and Wead would work together again, and a scene from that film will be Sunday's Scene.

* Compare it to Howard Hawks' Air Force, released the year before. It's essentially the same time-frame, same area of combat, much more fictionalized, with a clear "boo-yah" victory in its story-line. We'll take a look at THAT one in the foreseeable future.