Oct 181946
 
four reels

In a town ruled by the wealthy Ivers family, on a stormy night, run-away Martha Ivers is brought back to her domineering aunt. The night ends with the aunt dead, tough kid Sam gone, and weak kid Walter at Martha’s side. Years later, Sam (Van Heflin) passes through town and meets recent parolee, Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott). Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) now runs the town and is married to an alcoholic Walter (Kirk Douglas).

Categorized as a Film Noir, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers starts like like a gothic melodrama: a dark, grim mansion, a thunderstorm as background (rain is a motif), a malevolent aunt, and murder. But this is Noir. Evil hums through the streets of Iverstown. The citizens are corrupt, weak, and cruel. Sam is our hero, and as good as this world has, and he is a gambler with a list of crimes probably only partly invented, who is brash, holier-than-thou, and stupid. A smart person would know to get the Hell out of Iverstown and never look back.

Walter’s insecurities make him vicious in the way only a broken man can be. Yet I sympathize with him. He does the best he can as a sniveling fool in love with a monster and afraid of everything. Martha is a monster made by a monster. Her childhood turned her into what she is, but she wants something more. She wants the escape she failed to achieve when a kid. And she’ll never get it unless something happens. At least that is what she tells herself. But no, she’ll never escape as her prison is self-maintained. They are villains that see villainy in everyone else, and they are only half wrong, but their mistaking what Sam has become will cost them.

This is Barbara Stanwyck at her steely best. I can’t think of another femme fatale that hits me this hard. Her Martha is twisted and as broken as Walter, in a different way. Kirk Douglas is as good. It was his first screen performance, and his best. He is the personification of sickness. Heflin and Scott pale in comparison, but that was inevitable.

The production code purifies Sam’s and Toni’s relationship to an irritating degree—and with music fit for a fluffy romance. It also puts a less dark ending on a story that was going to be dark. Though the censors can’t be blamed for the title that belongs on a weepy. But those are minor complaints for a top notch Noir.

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