Jessica Lange, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Friday, April 08, 2005

David Thomson

“…. For the first time, Rafelson has a woman as the central character; and to that end he has opened our eyes to an actress written off for mere prettiness. Jessica Lange's Cora is really a "debut" as striking as Faye Dunaway's in Bonnie and Clyde….

“…. The movie is as erotic as it is not because of the flesh shown or the orgasms displayed, but because of the unerring awareness that two disconsolate people have found a happiness that transcends their traps and their own limits, and makes the act of murder seem unavoidable. Indeed, the central imperative has the effect of turning the Greek husband, Nick 9John Colicos), into a stooge overlooked in the awarding of motive.

“Cora is so much less voluptuous than Lana Turner in the earlier film, and so much more humane. Perhaps Jessia Lange is still one touch too thoroughbred. There doesn't seem quite enough reason for her to be sequestered in a back-road diner. Cain used her as something like narrative bait, and the movies are still far from the abandonment of a class system of glamour when looking at women. But the actress gives Cora an untidy, pressing inarticulacy that is dispelled whenever she can make love.

“Rafelson and Lange--and the deepening respect that the music and Nicholson's Frank bestow on her--have produced a movie about a woman's sexual desire that has no trace of male paranoia or hostility. Voyeurism gives way to intimacy and abandon. With the dropping of Cain's first-person narrative, the observing presence of the film makes Cora the most sentient creature: a core of passion canceling out the sleaziness of the melodrama….”

David Thomson
Film Comment, date ?
Get whole review!

“In the early 1980s, it was easy to make a case for Jessica Lnage as the most exciting and dangerous young actress in America. (Debra Winger was her closest rival, which may be a way of seeing how harsh America is on threatening young women.) In one year, Lange won the best supporting actress Oscar for Tootsie… and a best actress nomination for Frances… Moreover, having had a child by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lange was in the process of winning away Sam Shepard from wife and family note he doesn't admire greatly Tootsie or Frances]. There was such ability and authority, yet still she had the wild-eyed, untidy manner of a young hitchhiker in Arkansas or Oklahoma. It was possible to believe in her unusual upbringing: intense devotion to the northern Midwest; time in Paris as a musician and dancer, before modeling in New York, and then the stunning aplomb that pulled off King Kong (76, John Guillermin) and supplied the comedy of that unfairly berated remake.

“…. Her breakthrough had come as a Cora worthy of James M. Cain in The Postman Always Rings Twice… , where she easily handled the neediness, the spite, and the lunging desperation of a woman who deserved more than roadside kitchens. This is still, arguably, her most complete and disturbing performance….”

Thomson
A Biographical Dictionary of Film
Third Edition (1994), p 420

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home