The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

This Lewis Milestone film is one of the most superbly realized of the big budget noirs. Barbara Stanwyck delivers one of her finest performances opposite Van Heflin; newcomers Kirk Douglas (his film debut) and Lizabeth Scott (her second screen appearance) more than hold their own. Judith Anderson and Roman Bohnen add fine character performances.
Composer Miklós Rózsa scored the picture and screenwriter Robert Rossen adapted a story which served as the basis of the script. Milestone's assistant directors were Robert Aldrich and Byron Haskin. Both of these gentlemen went on to direct well regarded noirs of their own. Fortunately, a new print transfer has been recently released and the film looks quite good in comparison to the many faded public domain copies.

In attempting to describe the film, which approaches grand opera at times, I am hard pressed to avoid including any potential plot spoilers. This movie is so good that I do not want to ruin it for anyone who may be watching it for the first time by divulging too many plot points.

The industrialized city of Iverstown is one of the truly memorable dark cities in the atlas of film noir geography. The picture opens in a railroad yard in the year 1928. Sam Masterson (Darryl Hickman) is fleeing the police as he runs across the yard and seeks refuge in a box car. Inside the car is Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson), the niece of the ruling matriarch of Iverstown and heir to the factory fortune. Sam and Martha plan to run away by hopping a departing circus train that will leave the city at midnight. Before they can make their way to the train, the police discover the youngsters.

Sam makes good his escape while Martha is returned to the Ivers mansion. Martha is confronted by her aunt (Judith Anderson) and her private tutor, Mister O'Neil (Roman Bohnen). Martha has made numerous attempts to run away in the immediate past and her aunt is prepared to send her away to boarding school as a means of circumventing another such incident. The hatred between the child and her aunt is visceral. Martha's parents are both dead and her aunt is determined to clean her up and make an Ivers out of her. When Martha protests during the argument that her actual last name is "Smith," her aunt boasts that she has had her niece's name changed "legally." Martha's late father was a mill worker who married a daughter of the factory owner. When the aunt insults his memory, Martha shouts at her and the aunt responds that "The only good thing that your father ever did was to die!" When Martha threatens to run off again, her aunt reminds her that she controls enough of the world to see to it that Martha will always "be brought back here."



Later that night, with a thunderstorm raging outside, Sam Masterson returns to Martha's bedroom, entering the house by climbing through an upstairs window. There is still time for the teenagers to make the circus train if they hurry. Walter O'Neil, the son of Martha's tutor is present when the two begin to plan their getaway. A lightening strike knocks out the electricity in the house and when the aunt climbs the grand staircase to investigate a ruckus upstairs, something happens to change the lives of all three of the adolescents.

Eighteen years pass before Sam Masterson (Van Heflin), now a decorated military veteran and a career gambler, returns to Iverstown in 1946. His visit is purely accidental in that he damages his automobile while staring at a billboard promoting IVERSTOWN as America's fastest growing industrial city. Sam quips that "The road curved, but I didn't." When he pulls in to a garage for repairs, he learns that Walter O'Neil (Kirk Douglas) is now the local prosecuting attorney with aspirations for higher political office. O'Neil is now married to the former Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck), the owner of the local steel mill. A chance meeting with a young woman down on her luck by the name of Antonia "Toni" Marachek (Lizabeth Scott), outside of a boarding house that was once Masterson's boyhood home, leads Sam to seek a favor from the district attorney which leads to an escalating series of dramatic complications.

Barbara Stanwyck is rare form as the controlling Martha trapped in a loveless marriage to a weak and alcoholic husband, Walter O'Neil, played by Kirk Douglas. There is something perverse and sick about their relationship that almost suggests something akin to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Walter genuinely loves Martha, but she would prefer that he would simply "let go!" Martha has conducted a series of extramarital affairs and seems content with her husband only when she is free to dominate and humiliate him. Walter derives some satisfaction as the district attorney because it allows him to feel like God as he trifles with the lives of the petty criminals who pass through the police station and court house. O'Neil is a man who can work a political fix and a frame job with the help of the crooked cops and detectives who work with him.

Martha remains attracted to Sam Masterson in part because of his presumed criminality. Sam cautions Martha "I have killed, but I have never murdered." Martha has a streak of latent sadism about her and seems to relish the prospect of violence at times. For all of his rough and tumble living, Sam still possesses something of a moral center. He has familiarized himself with passages from the Gideon Bibles in the cheap hotel rooms in which he has so often stayed. In one scene, Sam advises Toni Marachek to remember that Lot's wife was reduced to a pillar of salt because she looked backward rather than moving forward.

This is a superlative film noir which can be watched and rewatched. Iverstown is smokestack city filled with secrets and political corruption in high places.





Written by Dan in the MW