The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film) filmed as "Le Dernier Tournant" ("The Last Turning") in France in 1939 and as "Ossessione" ("Obsession") in Italy in 1943. Frank Chambers (John Garfield) is a hobo who has hitched a ride with a man we later comes to learn is the local District Attorney, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames). He drops Frank off at a rural diner/service station, Twin Oaks, for a meal. Frank ends up working there. The diner is operated by a beautiful young woman, Cora Smith (Lana Turner), and her much older husband, Nick (Cecil Kellaway). Frank and Cora start to have an affair soon after they
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,