--- title: "The Postman" year: 1994 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-postman" fi1m_score: 75 critics_score: 69 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-20T07:03:10.480625+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T07:03:25.274751+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Postman (1994) Directed by Michael Radford · 1h 54m · MPA PG · Comedy, Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 75** · Critics 69 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Pablo Neruda spends two hours patiently teaching a postman that poetry is for getting girls > A slow, sunlit film about an exiled poet and his postman, carried almost single-handedly by Massimo Troisi. It is slight in places and over-scored at the end, and worth an evening all the same. ## Synopsis A small island off Italy, early 1950s. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) arrives in exile and is given a house on the hill, and with him comes more post than the island has ever seen. Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi), a fisherman’s son who wants no part of his father’s boat, takes the job of delivering it, cycling up the hill each morning with a bag of letters for a single customer. He begins asking the poet questions: what a metaphor is, how a man might write one, whether the sea counts. Then he sees Beatrice Russo (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) across a table-football game at the inn her aunt Donna Rosa (Linda Moretti) runs, and the questions become urgent. The telegrapher (Renato Scarpa), his boss, only wants to talk about Neruda’s politics. ## Review Michael Radford takes Antonio Skármeta’s novel about Pablo Neruda in exile, moves it from Chile to a small island off Italy in the early 1950s, and hands the whole thing to Massimo Troisi. Mario Ruoppolo (Troisi) is a fisherman’s son who wants no part of his father’s boat, and the only work going is delivering letters to the one man on the island who receives any: the poet Neruda (Philippe Noiret). *The Postman* is gentle, slow and sunlit, and it has a single idea, that poetry belongs to people who never went to school. It is a good film rather than a great one, and nearly everything good in it is Troisi. He plays Mario as a man who has never been in a hurry. He slouches, blinks slowly, holds his cap as if it might be taken off him. He moves little and sits when he can, and Radford and Troisi, who wrote the screenplay together, built the film around that stillness. Mario listens harder than anyone else on screen, and when he finally speaks the words arrive one at a time. Noiret plays Neruda as a large, amused man who enjoys being admired. The best scenes are the two of them on the beach talking about words. Mario asks what a metaphor is, Neruda tells him, and Mario decides within a minute that the whole world is probably a metaphor for something else. Then he sees Beatrice Russo (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) across a table-football game at the inn, and metaphors become a practical matter. We laughed, then felt slightly guilty about laughing at a man in love. Franco Di Giacomo shoots the island at noon, whitewashed walls and a sea so flat and bright it looks like a second sky, and the poet’s house in cool shade with the shutters half closed. Lorenzo Baraldi gives the inn a bar, a table-football game and not much else, so that the girl behind the counter is the only thing worth looking at. Gianna Gissi keeps Mario in the same cap and jacket for the whole story, which tells you what the job means to him. Roberto Perpignani cuts slowly and lets a conversation run out of things to say while the camera stays on it. Luis Bacalov’s score is the film’s other star and its chief liability. The theme, an accordion waltz, is lovely the first six times. By the end it is being asked to do the feeling for us, and it obliges. The second half takes a turn we will not describe; what we can say is that Radford’s direction, plain and unhurried when the story is about two men and a bicycle, has nothing extra to offer when the story gets larger, and the music fills the gap. The women are thinner than they should be. Cucinotta’s Beatrice is looked at a great deal and written hardly at all. Linda Moretti’s Donna Rosa, the aunt who runs the inn, is the better part, a woman who reads the poems Mario sends and knows exactly what they are for. Renato Scarpa’s telegrapher, who worships Neruda for his politics rather than his verses, and Mariano Rigillo’s Di Cosimo, the politician, are sketched in a few lines each and then leaned on late. Against Radford’s own record this is the odd one. *Nineteen Eighty-Four* (1984) was grey, cold and controlled; this is warm, loose and content to point the camera at its lead and get out of the way. That is probably the right decision. There is a scene in which Mario carries a tape recorder round the island collecting sounds for the poet: waves, wind, a church bell, his own held breath. Troisi holds the microphone out to the sea the way you would offer a drink to a friend. It moved us more than a man with a microphone should, and it says what the film is trying to say without a word of dialogue. Give it 114 minutes on an evening when you are in no hurry either. *Fi1m score 75, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics warm to The Postman as a gentle, wistful comedy about the friendship between a shy island postman and the exiled poet Neruda, and nearly all the praise gathers around Massimo Troisi. His performance is called heartfelt, boyish and truthful, and several reviews note that the circumstances of the film’s making lend it an extra sadness. Philippe Noiret’s Neruda is admired alongside him, and Radford is credited with keeping the fishing community free of postcard sentiment. The reservations concern everything around the two leads. Empire finds the film lovely to look at but simplistic, its melodrama old-fashioned and its ideas thin. Variety goes further, calling the direction by-the-numbers and the script diffuse, so that Troisi is left giving a performance in a vacuum. The spread is wide, from open affection to one firm dismissal, but even the sceptics concede the performance; the argument is about whether the film built around it earns its tenderness. ### Reviews we read (6) - **The New York Times** (NYT Critic’s Pick): The critic praises the film as a rueful, warmly affecting story of friendship and poetic awakening between a simple postman and the exiled poet Neruda. The performance by Massimo Troisi is highlighted as wonderful and central to its emotional impact, made more poignant by the actor's real-life circumstances. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/14/movies/film-review-the-postman-il-postino-a-lonely-soul-and-a-beloved-poet.html) - **The Independent** (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a charming and relaxed romantic fantasy that effectively argues for poetry's role in everyday life. Troisi's enchanting, boyish performance as the postman is singled out for particular praise. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/also-showing-easy-as-nailing-eggs-together-1578302.html) - **Time Out**, GA (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's engaging blend of humour and romance, highlighting the excellent performances from Philippe Noiret and Massimo Troisi as key to its seductive charm. Radford is commended for avoiding overly romanticised depictions of the community, making it an old-fashioned but superior alternative to similar films. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/il-postino) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (70/100, inferred): The review calls the film a tender and wistful comedy about an unlikely friendship that gains extra emotional depth from the difficult circumstances of its making. Troisi's heartfelt, truth-filled performance as the postman is singled out as the uncontested heart of the picture. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-06-14-ca-12876-story.html) - **Empire**, Ian Nathan (65/100, inferred): The review calls the film lovely-looking and sweet but ultimately simplistic and one-dimensionally limited, with old-fashioned melodrama. It highlights the enchanting relationship between the postman and Neruda, along with strong performances from Troisi and Noiret. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/il-postino-review/) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (30/100, inferred): The review notes Troisi's affecting performance in a sad-sweet tale of a postman whose life changes through friendship with the exiled poet Neruda. It criticizes the by-the-numbers direction and diffuse script, calling it essentially a performance in a vacuum despite the warm score. [Read](https://variety.com/1993/film/reviews/il-postino-2-1200435529/) ## Details - **Director:** Michael Radford - **Director:** Michael Radford - **Screenplay:** Michael Radford, Massimo Troisi - **Story:** Giacomo Scarpelli, Furio Scarpelli - **Novel:** Antonio Skármeta - **Cinematography:** Franco Di Giacomo - **Editor:** Roberto Perpignani - **Music:** Luis Bacalov - **Production design:** Lorenzo Baraldi - **Costume design:** Gianna Gissi - **Producer:** Gaetano Daniele, Mario Cecchi Gori, Vittorio Cecchi Gori - **Cast:** Massimo Troisi as Mario Ruoppolo; Philippe Noiret as Pablo Neruda; Maria Grazia Cucinotta as Beatrice Russo; Renato Scarpa as Telegrapher; Linda Moretti as Donna Rosa; Mariano Rigillo as Di Cosimo; Anna Bonaiuto as Matilde; Sergio Solli as Peasant - **Runtime:** 1h 54m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 14 June 1995 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 1996) - **Budget:** $3 million - **Box office:** $33 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0or7hSz-7gc ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: AT, ES. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Lumière Award for Best Foreign Film 1997: Lumière Award for Best Foreign Film (won) - Academy Awards 1996: Best Actor (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Original Dramatic Score (won) - Amanda Award for Best Foreign Feature Film 1996: Amanda Award for Best Foreign Feature Film (won) ## If you liked this - *Cinema Paradiso* (1988), Fi1m 84: Noiret again, as a projectionist teaching a boy; warmer, longer, and it knows it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/cinema-paradiso.md) - *Local Hero* (1983), Fi1m 86: An outsider arrives in a small coastal place and is quietly undone by it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/local-hero.md) - *Paterson* (2016), Fi1m 84: A bus driver writes poems nobody asks for; Jarmusch makes ordinary days feel enough. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/paterson.md) - *Central Station* (1998), Fi1m 85: A letter-writer and a boy cross Brazil; the unlikely friendship done with more grit. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/central-station.md) - *Neruda* (2016): Larraín’s playful chase film about the poet’s exile, for anyone curious what Neruda was fleeing. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-postman