A SPECIAL DELIVERY

By RICHARD CORLISS

HOW OFTEN IS FILMMAKING A matter of life and death? It was just that for Massimo Troisi, star of The Postman (Il Postino). Enfeebled by a heart condition, the Italian actor was able to work only an hour or two a day on his dream movie, whose story imagined a friendship between Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and a simple postman. Two cardiologists and an oxygen tent stood by on the set for Troisi, 41, who couldn't walk more than a few feet before sitting down. A high school gym teacher had to serve as his body double for more than half his scenes. Yet the actor persisted, literally wearing his heart out: he died the day after he finished shooting. "I believe if he hadn't done the film," says his director, Michael Radford, "Massimo might possibly be alive today."

And he would be wearing the shy, radiant smile that illuminates Il Postino, for last week the film received five nominations from the Motion Picture Academy in Hollywood. Though unsanctioned by the usual arbiters of artistic chic--film festivals and critics' groups--and something less than a breakout box-office hit of the Like Water for Chocolate variety, Il Postino became the first foreign-language film nominated for best picture since Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers 22 years ago. Troisi was cited for his performance, Radford for his direction. Both the screenplay and the score were also nominated. In a race where favorites like Tom Hanks and John Travolta stumbled, and where Babe proved that pigs could fly at Oscar time, Il Postino gave the biggest shock of all.

"This is a miracle, an absolute bloody miracle," effuses Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films. It was surely a godsend to the bustling, Disney-owned distributor, which had no big hit in 1995 to match such previous successes as The Piano, The Crow and Pulp Fiction. But if luck is the residue of design, the Postino nominations were the result of a savvy Miramax marketing campaign.

The company didn't use burger-chain tie-ins or Massimo Troisi dolls to merchandise the picture, but it did sell 30,000 copies of the 1985 Antonio Skarmeta novel on which the film is based, and another 25,000 books of Neruda poetry. A CD of stars like Sting, Madonna and Wesley Snipes reading Neruda was later sent to Academy members with a videocassette of the film, as was a note telling them that Il Postino was ineligible for the foreign-language Oscar because the Italians had not offered it for nomination. If Academy voters wanted to honor the film, they'd just have to nominate it for Best Picture.

That they did says a few things: that a small, TV-size movie plays well to older, stay-at-home Academy voters; that in a subpar year for Hollywood films, the members will look abroad; and that emotional clout always helps sell a picture. Il Postino takes as its subject the volatile nature of a strong, unequal friendship. The movie makes poignant and palpable that most discreet of passions: devotion.

Neruda (Philippe Noiret), the communist poet in political exile on an Italian isle, introduces the postman (Troisi) to the verbal rapture of metaphors; aids him in winning over the sultry, feral Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta); then abandons Mario to return home. But the film's true poetry is in Troisi's face--gaunt and ethereal, like that of a Jesus in a Neapolitan pageant. The audience needs no subtitles to read the feelings in this man's brave, troubled heart.

Troisi, who had had cardiac problems since a youthful bout of rheumatic fever, suffered a heart attack during an operation to replace a valve in 1993. "His eyes told me he was afraid," said Nathaly Snel Caldonazzo, who lived with Troisi the last two years of his life. "He did the film to get him out of his depression. It was a way of lifting his spirits." On the set, he was generous, treating Cucinotta with a teasing respect. And if she complained, he'd give the vital young woman a count-your-blessings glance and say, "You don't know how much I envy you."

In the film, as Neruda leaves the island, the postman hugs him with all the strength of his longing. On the last day of the 10-week shoot, Troisi did the same to Radford. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you my best," he mumbled softly. "But the next five pictures we do together, I will." Radford was so moved he wept, and that night Troisi told his family, "Hey, I think we're going to get a good picture out of this, because the director is a very sensitive guy. He started crying when I left the set." Troisi died the next day.

The star is dead; long live the film, as his finest memorial. That is the bittersweet moral Radford must take from Il Postino's success. "I'm just glad his memory can be honored in this way," he says. These nominations also carry a kind of poetic justice for Troisi. In the film, a postman loves a poet who helps and leaves him. Last week Academy members declared their love for a man they didn't know until he had left them, and whose need to make this film was a fatal act of heroism.

--Reported by Greg Burke/Rome and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by GREG BURKE/ROME AND JEFFREY RESSNER/LOS ANGELES