The Strange Love of Martha Ivers / Kirk Douglas on Film - A Biography

Starring:Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Judith Anderson, Roman Bohnen, Darryl Hickman, Janis Wilson, Ann Doran, Frank Orth, James Flavin, Mickey Kuhn, Charles D. Brown, Blake Edwards, William Duray, Walter Baldwin, Bert Roach, Bob Perry, Bill Burt, Betty Hill
Director: Lewis Milestone
Studio: Delta
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

Barbara Stanwyck mesmerizes as a woman with a past, bound by a crime to a husband she despises. Kirk Douglas quickens our collective pulses in his film debut as her disappointing, dipsomaniac spouse, while Van Heflin and Lizabeth Scott bring texture to supporting roles. Everything about this 1946 film noir is intriguing, from Lewis Milestone's direction to Edith Head's costumes to the edgy and troubled characters. It takes a long, hard look at guilt and the consequences of poorly planned actions. Well worth checking out, despite a wretched title. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Description

Barbara Stanwyck is the wonderfully wicked Martha Ivers, a wealthy and dominating woman who controls a small town after inheriting a large family fortune. She lives with her weakling husband, a district attorney running for mayor, played by Kirk Douglas in his feature film debut. Also features Kirk Douglas: On Film documentary.

Customer Reviews:

The return of the repressed.......2007-06-12

The sets and production values of this Paramount story of intrigue from 1946, the annus mirabilis of film noir, are superb, and there's no film starring Barbra Stanwyck that's not worth watching if just for her. Watchable though she inevitably is here, this is one of the few times in her long and magnificent career where she was truly miscast: Stanwyck was equally versatile playing comedy or drama, poverty or wealth, but the one thing she cannot play is neurosis--she was far too confident and driven a performer to be very believable as the highly ambivalent and conflicted Martha O'Neil. None of the three leads in this odd film seems ideally cast: as Martha's weakling alcoholic husband, Kirk Douglas, stunningly handsome in his first film role, is supposed to be wildly jealous of Van Heflin, of all people, who has come back to Iverstown (the Pennsylvania industrial town Stanwyck and Douglas jointly rule) with the memory of a childhood killing. Equally oddly cast is Janis Wilson, the memorably unhappy child Tina from NOW, VOYAGER here playing Martha as a young girl; it is inconceivable this anguished girl could ever grow up to be the tough and omnicompetent Stanwyck. Only Lizbeth Scott, as Heflin's weak new lady love, seems truly comfortable in her part. Even so, this DVD is still very much worth seeing if only for its early variations on common film noir themes.

Under the Radar.......2007-03-29

Excellent cast of Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas, Van Heflin, and Lizabeth Scott cannot pull this film out of mediocrity. The elements of noir are present: murder, jealousy, innocence, and betrayal but the film lacks the desperation and moral conflict that surrounds the protagonist in so many films of the genre. Van Heflin's performance is flat and Lizabeth Scott's performance is as wooden as a pine plank. Stanwyck's role and performance is more credible, but not as absorbing in later films such as Sorry Wrong Number and Double Indemnity. Kirk Douglas is very good in his first major Hollywood role as an alcoholic district attorney who fears that the appearance of a childhood friend (Heflin) will destroy the upper class lifestyle he enjoys with his wife (Stanwyck). The reunion between the Heflin character and Stanwyck's character is awkardly filmed and dramatized. Meanwhile we are left to believe that the nomadic Lizabeth Scott character still can't find the nerve to leave town. For some reason, for me anyway, the town looked liked it was situated somewhere near Pittsburg, Pa. I thought the ending of the film was a bit histrionic, but still an interesting ending. Why we needed anything after this, I don't know. The film should have concluded with a slow fade to darkness. Instead we see a sugar coded resolve that would have been more suited to a Disney Studio production.

KIRK DOUGLAS - OPUS ONE - KIRK DOUGLAS.......2007-03-20

First and only film noir directed by Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front), first movie of Kirk Douglas, a screenplay written by Robert Rossen (The Hustler), THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS is the kind of film any movie buff should have the desire to see. The Paramount Home Entertainment release I bought here at Amazon presents a near perfect copy of this movie but, beware, no extras at all.

Two scenes of the movie, Judith Anderson's death and the tragic finale deserve to stay in a film noir anthology, as well as the performances of Kirk Douglas and Barbara Stanwyck. Note also than the numerous close-ups of Lizabeth Scott and the silly epilogue of THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS must not be accredited to Lewis Milestones nor to Robert Rossen. They were shot, after the completion of the film, by Byron Haskin on the producer Hal B. Wallis demand.

A DVD zone your library.

Kirk Douglas - Best EVER.......2007-01-12

The title may steer you in the wrong direction - this is not a romance. This is one of the best early pscho-dramas. Barbara Stanwyck is cold as ice, softening up all girlie when her childhood love returns. Kirk Douglas was magnificent as the whiney, wimpy, drunken husband.

And this movie has the best ending of all movies EVER.

They just don't write them like this anymore.

A childhood' s sin !.......2006-12-26

Lewis Milestone sealed his rubric in this troubled Noir, where the shadows of a somber past lurks the private intimacy of Martha, when a childhood friend rekindles old passions and so er husband the District Attorney O' Neil will ignite the imminent tragedy of a secret strongly kept in silence and hovered by a perverse blackmail.

Once more the Noir genre, mirrors one of its most relevant elements, which is the impossibility to break the bounds with an infamous and lurking past that obligates to turn a whole life in search of a supposed redemption based on a mutual complicity.

A fabulous cast that includes Kirk Douglas in his debut, Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Lizabeth Scott. The screenplay of Robert Rosen is based on an unpublished story "lovelies bleeding" by Jack Patrick. Released in July, 24 1946 with a running time of 115 minutes.
One of my personal favorite Noir films of the middle forties.

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