Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

zardoz-13 The best film noir movies rarely contain happy endings. Relief substitutes for the closure of a happy ending. Essentially, these films amount to unsavory tragedies about conflicted people who bring the curtain down on their sordid lives through their own frailties. They entangle themselves in a web of their own guilt and madness, and every effort they make to extricate themselves from their predicament seems to drag them deeper into that hellhole until they wind up destroying themselves. "All Quiet on the Western Front" director Lewis Milestone's "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" exemplifies this description of film noir. A sympathetic but rebellious teenager, Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson of "Now, Voyager") hates her implacable aunt, Mrs. Ivers (Oscar nominated actress Dame Judith Anderson of "Rebecca"), because the latter abhors cats and refuses to let her change her last name back to her father's name Smith. Repeatedly, Martha tries to run away from this harridan. The first time that we see her attempt to leave Iverstown in 1928, the authorities catch her in a railroad freight car with a never-do-well teenage boy, Sam Masterson (Darryl Hickman of "Tea and Sympathy"), who has plotted their evening exodus. Sam wants to run away from his drunken father and join the circus, and Martha is willing to follow him. The police bring Martha back to her aunt, while Sam manages to escape. Martha has brought her cat back with her and she sneaks the forbidden animal back into the house. At one point, she is poised to flee again, while her tutor's son, Walter O'Neill, Jr., (Mickey Kuhn of "Red River"), explains that his father made him reveal their hiding place to the police. She is about to run away when Sam climbs through her upstairs window. A storm has erupted outside, and the electricity shuts down, plunging the house into darkness. Martha loses her cat, and the frightened feline makes its way down the staircase. Sam scrambles after the critter in the dark. When he hears Mrs. Ivers approach, Sam sneaks out of the house, because she has warned him that she will have him arrested and sent to reform school. The aunt encounters the harmless cat on the staircase and beats it repeatedly with her cane. Of course, the Production Code prohibited filmmakers from depicting acts of animal cruelty, so we don't catch a glimpse of the poor kitten suffering. A righteously indignant Martha snatches the cane from Mrs. Ivers. She whacks her once on the temple. The blow sends the old lady tumbling down the stairs. Walter's father (Roman Bohnen of "Brute Force") checks Mrs. Ivers, and he informs them that she is dead. Martha makes up a story on the spot that an intruder broke into the house and killed her mother. Mr. O'Neill goes along with their alibi, and years later a man is nabbed who fits Martha's description. Martha's husband Walter O'Neill Jr., (Kirk Douglas of "Campion") prosecutes him, and the man is hanged for a murder that he didn't commit. It doesn't help matters that the guy had a police record. Eventually, Mr. O'Neill coerces Martha into marrying his son. Meantime, Sam has left Iverstown and joined the circus. He makes his living as a professional gambler and has racked up a good war record. One evening Sam is cruising down the highway when it realizes that he has entered his old hometown. He is so amazed and distracted that he is back in Iverstown that he had left in 1928 that he smashes his DeSoto into a tree on the side of the road. When Martha and Walter learn about the arrival of Sam Masterson (Van Heflin of "Shane"), they suspect their worst fears that he has come back to blackmail them for the murder. Neither Walter nor Martha know Sam left the house that fateful evening before Mrs. Ivers fell down the stairs and died. Initially, a paranoid Walter wants to persuade Sam to leave the town, even if he must use force. At one point, he hires some pugnacious private detectives, and they haul Sam out of town and rough him up. Instead of intimidating Sam enough to scare him into packing, the beating prompts Sam to return to Iverstown. No sooner has Sam gotten back to town than he spots the hard-luck but beautiful dame, Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott of "Dead Reckoning"), that he has run into earlier. Reluctantly, she reveals that the police picked her up for breaking her parole, but they let her off when she agreed to set Sam up for the cops. By this time, Martha has heard about Sam's return, and she wants to see him. When they were kids, Martha was infatuated with Sam. She wants to turn back the hands of time and be with him. Sam confronts a drunken Walter and a conniving Martha at their palatial residence, and an argument ensues. Sam walks out the door in disgust. Walter shoots Martha, who helps him pull the trigger on her. As Sam rushes back to the house, Walter shoots himself in the chest deliberately, and he dies with Martha.As you can gather, "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" eschews a happy ending. Clocking in just five minutes shy of two hours, this grim, melodramatic soap opera doesn't malinger for a moment. The performances are first-class, with Kirk Douglas making an impressive screen debut. Van Heflin plays Sam as a grown-up, and he regales everybody with the way he nonchalantly rolls a quarter on his knuckles. Barbara Stanwyck is tops as the femme fatale. The atmospheric film was carefully made, marvelously produced by Hal Wallis, superbly photographed, and doom hangs on the husband and wife like the Sword of Damocles'. Anybody born after 1965 who watches this classic but haunting narrative may be surprised to see Van Heflin repeatedly rolling a quarter on his knuckles the same way Val Kilmer did in the Kurt Russell western "Tombstone."

PimpinAinttEasy Three kids share a childhood secret involving the murder of a cruel aunt. Many years later, their paths cross once again as adults. Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) returns to him hometown to find that his childhood friends Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanswyck) and Walter O Neil (Kirk Douglas) are now the power couple that rules over the town. Old passions are reignited when Martha who always had a crush on Sam tries to seduce him. The alcoholic Walter tried to stop their affair. Even though Sam falls in love with a hard drinking traveling blonde (Lizbeth Scott), the power couple draw him back into their web of hatred and jealousy. The film ends quite tragically (not for Sam) when after a triangular stand off, the power couple commit suicide.The Strange Love of Martha Ivers was painfully boring. Milkos Roza's loud and dramatic score ruined the film completely. But the film would have been painful to watch even without the score. The play like quality of the film does not help at all. I found myself wishing that some of the long drawn out scenes would simply end. But they just go and on. I am not sure why this film is classified as noir. It does not feature any of the brilliant noir cinematography, plot twists or clever dialog. Is it because Barbara Stanswyck plays a femme fatale? Probably.Van Heflin who played overtly decent characters in both Shane and 3:10 to Yuma gets the macho role of Sam Masterson for a change. And he does a good job with it. While Kirk Douglas plays the alcoholic wuss of a District Attorney. Barbara Stanswyck who played the murderous femme fatale in the film's title was strangely unsexy. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she was fully cloaked while her hairstyle was matronly. Lizbeth Scott does lend some erotic relief.

gridoon2018 Despite its length (115 minutes), "The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers" is absorbing all the way. It's a film noir that occasionally crosses over into psychological drama. It develops the characters, who are never mere "types"; they are complex, conflicted, unsure of what they want, and of what the other characters want. The cast is exceptional; even Janis Wilson as the young Stanwyck is an inspired choice. Judith Anderson makes a strong impression in just one scene, and it's hard to believe this was the first time Kirk Douglas appeared in front of the camera. I do get the feeling that the ending might have been different if the film was made about 15 years later, when the Production Code which demanded that sinners should ultimately pay for their sins was beginning to loosen up. *** out of 4.

Cristi_Ciopron 'The Strange Love of Martha Ivers', a work of genuine art, and a masterpiece at that, lifts your mind into the ineffable; it's intriguing in a way only masterpieces are, and you might appreciate the smoothness and gusto of Milestone's filmmaking. It begins as a Gothic tale, with a dark old house (and assured teenage sexuality, a domineering girl and her submissive, meek sidekick, decadent patricians and ascending plebeians, hence it promises a story about submission), and it goes on with a sulfurous, _unendearing plot and bleak characters (but beyond that it's reasonably realistic in its set of characters), with certainly glamorous performances from the three main characters; unlike them, the every-men, the townspeople, the bit parts are made in a realistic tone (the policemen, a bartender who cheers Masterson's revenge). One gets the sense it was meant as a cool movie, which 'Love …' surely achieves. Authors like Milestone and Miklos Rozsa promise a spectacular show; so, a masterpiece with a sense of cool.The dialogs are exquisite, every line, some lines are very adult-themed (from the size of the west land, to becoming a woman officially, 'coming through that window'). Each thing you feel is checked by the script: the unburdened Martha seems indeed less sexy than her teenage ego, and she seduces Sam Masterson by appealing to his pity and commiseration. As an adult woman, she seems dry and drained, and the script checks that. Unlike many other noir movies of the age, 'The Strange Love …' is very crafty, with a set of disconcerting and believable characters, with smoothness as opposed to roughness and fierceness. There are forces at work within each of them, but they are earthly, innate, mundane forces, not a fatality which sweeps them; and when they crush, they crush from the inside, deteriorated, broken, dissolved by their own inner doom.With these movies, some enjoy the template, are eager after the template, while others enjoy the craft, the exquisiteness, the unmistakable uniqueness of the work, the ineffable that renders the template irrelevant.