Passion

Fehèr follows Visconti, Tay Garnett and Bob Rafelson in tackling The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M Cain's classic pulp tale of infidelity, murder and recrimination in which a hired hand makes a fateful move on his employer's wife. Here the cast grunt in Hungarian monosyllables, the action moves at glacier pace, and the b/w print has been specially processed to look like someone just dug it up. After an hour or so, it does, however, begin to exert a certain hold, especially when the insurance company investigator (who looks like Georg Solti crossed with something out of George Grosz) gets on the trail of the guilty couple. We finish with a quotation from the Book of Revelation reminding us that we're all going to hell.