‘The Strange Love of Martha Ivers’ or — A Poisonous Microcosm?
It’s a wholly reasonable question to ask of ‘The Strange Love of Martha Ivers’ (1946) — exactly what sort of movie is this? Is it a romance? A melodrama? A thriller? A woman’s picture? An anti-woman’s picture? A noir? A murder mystery? A class struggle? A biting social satire of small town America? Or maybe it’s all of the above? Either way, it seems as though Martha Ivers’ love is very strange indeed.
The basic set-up is as follows -
A young Martha Ivers runs away from her rich but domineering aunt, an aunt who essentially controls the town of Iverstown. Wild boy Sam Masterson, who has a crush on Martha, brings her some food as she hides in a train carriage and we immediately click that Martha might not be all sweetness and light when she is visibly disappointed that Sam bought the food with money as opposed to stealing it. Sam should be careful.
Another kid, Walter O’Neil, tips off the police to Martha and Sam’s hiding place and Martha is brought home to face her aunt. Walter also has a crush on Martha and Walter’s father has an eye on her aunt or, to be more precise, her vast fortune. Yet when Martha brutally murders her own aunt (I TOLD you she was bad news!) a cover story has to be quickly concocted to convince the town of Martha’s innocence and, once this alibi is in place, Walter’s father takes Martha, along with her aunt’s money, under his wing.
Sam, meanwhile, has run away to join the circus followed by the army and when he returns (having now grown into Van Heflin) to Iverstown years later he discovers Walter (now the town’s D.A. and played by Kirk Douglas) and Martha (now the town’s matriarch and played by Barbara Stanwyck) are married. Sam’s a gambler, drinker and a decorated war vet, but he’s decent sort of guy who’s been through a lot in life. This decency could be what attracts wayward Toni (Lizabeth Scott) to Sam. Toni is currently skipping bail and when she ends up being arrested for violating her probation Sam decides to contact his old friend, and now local D.A., to see if Walter can pull any strings to secure Toni’s release.
However, the now alcoholic Walter isn’t sure what Sam’s angle is or why he has come to see him. Could it be that Sam has blackmail on his mind and prepared to dig up a secret from their past? Or is Walter simply paranoid from all the drink, a highly toxic marriage and years of keeping a dark and terrible secret? And just how far will the rich and powerful go to keep it a secret? Watch ‘The Strange Love of Martha Ivers’ and find out!
Phew, that’s a lot and that’s only the basic set-up for all that follows, and what follows is a nicely handled examination of corruption, power, wealth, violence and the damaging effect of denial. The film might not be a thriller, as such, but there’s the constant atmosphere of threat in Iverstown and one of the tricks the film pulls off is allowing it to emerge from the various sources of power.
Where the biggest thrill lurks here is the dissection of that typically American power. Walter is the D.A. yet is weak, an alcoholic and not above using his office to inflict physical violence on innocents to secure his own ends. Martha herself is pure poison and rules Iverstown like her own private fiefdom. Yet this couple represent everything great about America, especially in terms of politics and capitalism, but boy they make a real pair and the message meted out here is as brutal as the physical beatings dished out down a dark alley.
It’s clear our sympathies are with Sam. Sure, he might be a bit of a lowlife but he’s still a human being with a sense of right and wrong. It’s also apparent that this movie was aimed at soldiers who had returned from war as this movie assuages their guilt and pain at having been forced into becoming killers in combat. But there’s a difference between killing for country and committing cold-blooded murder and it seems that this society these men were away fighting for is capable of atrocities as brutal as those on the battlefield. It’s a very interesting examination of violence and power in America.
Add onto this a smart and edgy script that references all the above (plus adultery and underage sex for good measure), some incredible costume design by Edith Head, a suitably robust score by Miklós Rózsa and clear and assured directing by Lewis Milestone and ‘The Strange Love of Martha Ivers’ is one of the more captivating and unusual dramas of its period. In that aspect it more than lives up to its name.
