The Postman Always Rings Twice

Without doubt watered down, though Turner’s constant white outfits make her character seem anything but virginal (in a way that apparently worked well for Maltin, at least). This is perhaps the only version that really makes clear what Frank’s motive is for signing a document implicating Cora. Unfortunately, the dialogue and performances are mostly sub-par, and one can’t help feeling that, even with constraints, this should have been better.

In fact, it seems that every version of Cain’s novel has failed in one way or another, and that a great movie could have been made from this material, but where there is also a feeling that the moment for that may well have passed. Nevertheless, if it were up to me to put together a new version, and provided I could find the right actor, I’d seriously consider making the protagonist a black guy, and abandoning the various versions of comeuppance and tragedy with which the story always concludes, and instead, after she declares her pregnancy, after she finds out he cheated, and after arguing and shouting about that, the film would end, not just with reconciliation, but with their best sex scene yet, one of gloriously cosmic proportions.