General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Postman (1995 film)

The Postman, released in Italian as Il postino, is a 1994 comedy-drama directed by Michael Radford in collaboration with Massimo Troisi, about a shy island postman whose friendship with the exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda transforms his life. It opened in Italy on 22 September 1994 and in the United States on 14 June 1995, and it received five Academy Award nominations at the 1996 ceremony, winning Best Music, Original Dramatic Score for Luis Bacalov.¹^•² The film was Massimo Troisi's last work: he died on 4 June 1994, the day after production ended, three months before the Italian release.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title / year	Il postino, Italy, France, Belgium, 1994; US release June 14, 1995⁵^•¹
Director	Michael Radford, in collaboration with Massimo Troisi⁵
Source	Freely adapted from Antonio Skármeta's novel Ardiente Paciencia (published in Italian as Il postino di Neruda)⁶
Cast	Massimo Troisi (Mario Ruoppolo), Philippe Noiret (Pablo Neruda), Maria Grazia Cucinotta (Beatrice Russo)⁵
Setting	Summer 1952, an island in the gulf of Naples where Neruda lives in political exile⁷
Oscars	Five nominations at the 1996 ceremony; won Best Music, Original Dramatic Score (Luis Bacalov)²
Budget and box office	Made for $3 million; took $21 million at the box office⁸
Runtime	113 minutes (Italian release)⁵

Spoilers

Story and source

The film is freely inspired by the novel Ardiente Paciencia by the Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, a work also known in Italian as Il postino di Neruda.⁶^•⁹ In the novel the story takes place in the early 1970s on Isla Negra, the Chilean village where Neruda lived, and parallels the young postman's growth with the political upheavals in Chile.¹⁰ The film moves the action to Italy: in the summer of 1952, on an island in the gulf of Naples, the unemployed Mario Ruoppolo, son of a fisherman with little taste for the sea, takes a job as an auxiliary postman whose only customer is Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet living there in political exile.⁷^•⁶

Through the friendship that develops, Mario discovers the power of poetry, learning to use metaphors to court the beautiful Beatrice Russo, and gradually opens his eyes to politics and to the beauty of the island around him.⁷ The screenplay was written by Anna Pavignano, Michael Radford, Furio Scarpelli, Giacomo Scarpelli, and Massimo Troisi.⁵

Production and the death of Massimo Troisi

Troisi's dream project. The film was Troisi's own long-cherished project, and despite a failing heart he insisted on seeing it through.¹⁰ Shooting was repeatedly delayed by his health: it was meant to begin in September 1993 but started in March 1994 after six months of postponements.¹¹ The first scene shot was the newsreel of Neruda's arrival, filmed at Rome's Stazione Ostiense; interiors of Troisi's and his father's house were built at Cinecittà, and exteriors were then filmed on the Aeolian island of Salina and at Procida.¹¹^•¹² Production ran from 18 March to 3 June 1994.³

Troisi died on 4 June 1994, the day after production wrapped, at the age of 41.³^•¹³ Because of his condition, some exterior shots of Mario were filmed with a body double, a detail noticed by Italian reviewers at the film's Venice premiere.¹⁴ The film premiered out of competition at the 51st Venice International Film Festival on 1 September 1994, as a tribute to Troisi, and reached Italian cinemas on 22 September 1994.⁵^•³

Awards

The film received five nominations at the 68th Academy Awards, held 25 March 1996: Best Picture, Directing (Michael Radford), Actor in a Leading Role (Massimo Troisi), Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published, and Music, Original Dramatic Score.² It won the music award for Luis Enrique Bacalov's score.² Troisi's acting and screenplay nominations were posthumous.¹⁵ It was the first Italian film to be nominated for Best Picture by the American Academy.⁸

A category it could not enter. Despite being an Italian-language film, The Postman was ineligible for the Best Foreign Language Film category, because it had not been submitted in that category in 1994, the year it opened in Italy.¹⁶ Miramax, its American distributor, doubled the film's $1.5 million marketing budget in the weeks before the ceremony to support its Best Picture campaign.¹⁶

At the 1996 BAFTA Film Awards the film won three prizes: Film Not in the English Language, Direction, and Original Film Music.¹⁷ In Italy, Roberto Perpignani won the 1995 David di Donatello for editing.¹⁷

Reception

American critics received the film warmly. On Metacritic it holds a score of 81 based on 13 critic reviews, with 11 positive and 2 mixed.¹⁸ Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a rueful, warmly affecting film featuring a wonderful performance by Mr. Troisi," and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "the beauty of the film is in its quietness."¹⁹ Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times observed that the film, made under wrenching circumstances, gained poignancy from its troubles.¹⁹

Commercial performance. The film was made for $3 million and took $21 million at the box office, figures that made its awards recognition remarkable for a subtitled foreign-language film.⁸ A 2017 academic study of film adaptation described it as a "blockbuster" that remained widely available on home video, in contrast with more critically ambitious but commercially unsuccessful adaptations.²⁰ The film was re-released in British cinemas on 15 October 2018.⁸

Legacy

The film brought Massimo Troisi, already a major figure in Italian comedy, his widest international recognition: his posthumous nominations for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay introduced him to audiences who had never seen his earlier work.²¹ The story itself has a longer history: Skármeta filmed his own novel in 1983 with the actor Óscar Castro as the shy postman, but it was the 1994 film Il postino, not that earlier version, that brought the story international acclaim.²²^•²³ The 81st Venice festival screened the film again in 2024, thirty years after its premiere, in a restored 4K version.⁵^•¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026