tstrat-64441 As forgettable remake as your ever likely to see! No tension, no suspense, just tawdry, over the top lusting!

NORDIC-2 In March 1927 Long Island housewife Ruth Snyder and her lover, Judd Gray, joined together to murder Snyder's husband, Albert, for the insurance money. Both were caught, tried, convicted, and swiftly executed. A notorious case, the Snyder-Gray affair became pop culture legend when Thomas Howard, a New York 'Daily News' photographer, surreptitiously photographed Snyder's death in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. Published in the 'Daily News' on Jan. 12, 1928, the photo caused such a sensation that the newspaper had to print an additional 750,000 copies. Six years later James M. Cain's novel, 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', fictionalized the Snyder-Gray case to critical and popular acclaim. In 1946 Cain's book was brought to the screen by M-G-M with John Garfield as Frank Chambers (Judd Gray's counterpart), the glamorous Lana Turner as Cora Smith (the Ruth Snyder figure), and Cecil Kellaway as Nick Smith (based on victim Albert Snyder). In Cain's novel, Nick is Nick Papadakis, a swarthy, rather venal Greek greasy spoon proprietor. Interestingly the 1946 film version softens Nick's personality and elides his Mediterranean ethnicity but retains the fact that he is considerably older than his wife (at the time of filming Turner was 25 and Kelloway was 52). Bob Rafelson's remake, written by playwright/screenwriter David Mamet, is a more faithful adaptation of Cain's novel and—15 years after the collapse of the Hays Code—is also vastly more sexually explicit. In Rafelson's version Jack Nicholson is cast as dissolute drifter Frank Chambers, Jessica Lange is the bored, oversexed wife, Cora Papadakis, John Colicos plays Nick (restored to his full, greasy ethnic unattractiveness), and Angelica Huston appears (gratuitously) as Madge, a circus tamer of big cats who has a fling with Frank. With solid acting, sure direction by Rafelson, superb production design by George Jenkins ('The Parallax View'; 'All the President's Men'), and outstanding cinematography by Ingmar Bergman stalwart Sven Nykvist, the 1981 version of 'Postman' should have been a neo-noir classic. Unfortunately something fails to click—most probably the chemistry between Nicholson and Lange, which depends too much on simulated high-octane animal attraction and not enough on real simpatico. While quite good, Rafelson's version is strangely flat and uninvolving; we end up not caring very much what happens to Frank and Cora. VHS (1993); DVD (1997).

Milan One of the greatest Hollywood rogue & maverick directors, represented in grand persona of Bob Rafelson, (who was given a free hand by Lorimar on this one) did a mighty good job in adapting famous Cain novel for the big screen. Packing a whole lot more wallop then the original, constrained in studio system - censorship dictated, straight jacket, Postman of 1981 is the movie with outstanding performances, that let us feel every throb of passion and excitement, overflow in doomed love story, of two lost souls, Frank and Cora, that are brought together by sinister faith, their carnal desires and bad luck. They plan and go through the murder fueled by greed and sexual desire. The murder plot is almost silly but it's dictated by the level of their intelligence.There's something about the irony of two people who are caught by passion to begin with, and then transcend it, but can't elude the karma of their passion. That is very attractive to viewer who understands and feels their despair. They escalate each other's thoughts all the time,neither of them is capable of doing that audacious as murder, or even conceiving of their lives as anything but what they are, without each other. They're equal partners in their crime, their adultery and their murder and their love for each other.This movie shows all this and it shows it vividly, the way 1946 version never could. That's why, Rafelson film is the ultimate embodiment of James Cain novel. Cain never wrote about very intelligent criminals. He wrote about desperate outcasts. Frank and Cora are those in the truest sense, and only Nicholson and Lange, could make you not only see, but feel their emotion, hopes, dreams, and their ultimate loss.

gregkae It is quite a lengthy exercise, be prepared, so that you can put all that time to good use. I had my whites on long cycle, rice in the steamer, managed to do all my overdue emails, pay the bills and still not miss a single turn in the plot. It is like NASCAR without the cars, a walking contest. Forget what other reviews say about steamy sex scenes, there is only one and unfortunately, while you can get off to Lange, it includes Nicholson (and just like that scene, the movie is all over the place and does not make any sense and you do wish you could cut Nicholson out of the picture). Thank dog I got my stuff done otherwise I would have regretted lost time. The book is 100 pages long which makes circa 1.22 minutes of screen time per page and this is the gripping part.