The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1946 American film noir directed by Tay Garnett and starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, and Cecil Kellaway.

Kyle drops Frank off at "Twin Oaks", a rural diner/service station on a highway in the hills outside Los Angeles.

The plan involves Cora striking Nick with a sock full of ball-bearings and pretending he had fatally hit his head falling in the bathtub.

Sackett stops by to put air in his tire, and Frank and Cora stage an argument where she insists on driving because of the men's inebriation.

Although this ploy works temporarily, a measure by Cora's lawyer, Arthur Keats, prevents her full confession from coming into the hands of the prosecutor.

[6] Producer Carey Wilson and his screenwriters sent different versions of the script back and forth with the PCA until the group ultimately endorsed it.

[7] Given that the final script sanitized some of the graphic violence and sex of the novel, the filmmakers take steps to make the characters’ actions more rational.

Instead of race being the motivating factor for Cora’s dissatisfaction with the marriage, Nick’s frugality and lack of likability become the driving forces in the film adaptation.

The film adaptation downplays the sexual nature of Frank and Cora’s relationship and essentially removes any notion of their sadomasochistic tendencies.

To make it look like they too have been injured in the car crash, Frank hits Cora in the face and rips open her blouse then proceeds to have sex with her.

Upon reviewing the synopsis, with its themes of adultery and murder, the PCA persuaded RKO to abandon its plans to film Cain's story, calling it "definitely unsuitable for motion picture production."

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the rights to make a movie adaptation a full twelve years prior to the film's release.

[16] MGM did not go forward with the project earlier as the Hays Code began to be rigorously enforced very shortly after they had acquired the rights.

The studio finally decided to proceed in 1944, upon observing the success of Paramount's film adaptation of Cain's novella Double Indemnity, which violated many of the same moral taboos.

"[citation needed] Bette Davis remarked "It's highway robbery that Miss Turner didn't get an Oscar nomination.

For the seaside love scenes, he took the cast and crew to Laguna Beach, where a persistent fog delayed filming for several days.

Garnett would not listen to Garfield, but Turner managed to convince the director to go back to Los Angeles for treatment.

During shooting, a tiger sprayed the two stars, prompting John Garfield to jokingly ask for stunt pay.

Mr. Garfield reflects to the life the crude and confused young hobo who stumbles aimlessly into a fatal trap.

And Miss Turner is remarkably effective as the cheap and uncertain blonde who has a pathetic ambition to 'be somebody' and a pitiful notion that she can realize it through crime.

But Hume Cronyn is slyly sharp and sleazy as an unscrupulous criminal lawyer, Leon Ames is tough as a district attorney and Alan Reed plays a gum-shoe role well.

"[19] Variety wrote that the two leads gave "the best of their talents" to their roles, but agreed with Crowther in finding Kellaway's performance "a bit flamboyant at times in interpreting the character.

"[21] John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote: "Since the hero and heroine of the film are never dealt with sympathetically, the mating calls that preface their amour are monotonous.

But once they get around to murder, things pick up and I'm confident you'll enjoy the resulting legal byplay that goes on between Hume Cronyn, as Miss Turner's lawyer, and Leon Ames, as the prosecuting attorney.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Cronyn and Mr. Ames take most of the acting honors, and there is a decided letdown in the picture after a courtroom clash in which both of them participate with vast enthusiasm.

"[22] Writing in 2000, critic Stephen MacMillan Moser appreciated Lana Turner's acting and wrote, "It is perhaps her finest work—from a body of work that includes very few truly stellar performances.

She is best remembered for the spate of films like Peyton Place and Madame X that traded on her personal tragedies, but Postman, which predates all that, is a stunner—a cruel and desperate and gritty James Cain vehicle that sorely tests Lana's skills.

But she succeeds marvelously, and from the first glimpse of her standing in the doorway in her white pumps, as the camera travels up her tanned legs, she becomes a character so enticingly beautiful and insidiously evil that the audience is riveted.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The Postman Always Rings Twice spins a sultry web of mystery with a gripping adaptation of a classic noir tale.

The aesthetic quality of the film creates an atmosphere of disorientation, rejection of traditional morality and overall pessimistic tone.