The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Directed by Lewis Milestone. Starring Van Heflin, Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Judith Anderson, Janis Wilson, Roman Bohnen, Mickey Kuhn, Darryl Hickman.

Intriguing melodrama finds Heflin returning to his hometown by chance and encountering the girl he left behind, now a wealthy, unhappily-married adult played by Stanwyck. This is hardly a rekindled-romance story with a happy ending on the horizon—the man she married (Douglas) is the last person still living who knows the truth about an awful deed committed almost twenty years prior, and she sees Heflin as a sucker who might just save her from her miserable existence (could murder be in the cards?). Essentially a four-character story, and four’s a crowd (the fourth being Scott’s probation violator, a not-as-bad girl for the noir hero), but when they’re so boldly drawn, who needs additional clutter? Director Milestone lets the hungry actors and Miklós Rózsa’s lush yet tense score do the heavy-lifting; his sit-back-and-watch attitude ends up preventing the movie from tipping into overwrought territory. Stanwyck avoids dangerous dame déjà vu with the kind of mood swings that would make ambitious psychoanalysts salivate, and Douglas (in his film debut) plays a self-loathing wimp with as much fiery tenacity as the inflamed heroes and wretched bastards he’s best known for. Try to spot a young Blake Edwards in a bit part as a sleepy sailor along for the ride.

76/100