The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film) 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." 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 was a star, and not necessarily an
Portrayal of women in film noir Cora in "The Postman Always Rings Twice", 1946, she “exhibits a remarkable series of unmotivated character switches and roles.” In her introductory shot she is seen as a sex bomb, a desired sex object through the narrators eyes, yet she juxtaposes this vision as a hard working woman, then a “loving playmate in an adulterous relationship; a fearful girl in need of protection, [a] victim of male power; [a] hard, ruthless murderess; [a] mother-to-be;” then following that she is a sacrifice to the judicial system. This inconsistency can be seen as a parallel to the unsureness of the hero’s trajectory,