Criterion Club: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Join John Anzalone film professor/history buff/raconteur for a lively presentation, scene analysis and Q&A after watching the movie at home.

1928: Martha Ivers, a rebellious teen, plans to hop a freight with her friend Sam to escape from Iverstown and her hated aunt, a cruel, unbending guardian and the holder of the Ivers fortune. She and Sam are caught before the train departs and are separated as they run from the railroad cops. Returning home Martha has a fierce argument with her aunt and kills her. Sam has seen what happened and flees. Martha is left with lawyer O’Neill, now the executor of the estate and his son Walter who loves Martha.
Flash forward: 1946. Sam is driving cross country after returning from WW II combat. A car accident forces him to stop in Iverstown to find Martha is now the head of the family corporation. She is married to Walter, the town district attorney with political ambitions. Sam meets Toni and decides he has no interest in seeing Martha again as they prepare to blow town.
But this is the world of noir, a universe where the past never dies but keeps intruding into the present until old debts are paid in full. In this universe, Walter is an impotent drunkard, a corrupt hack whom Martha despises. He is still in love with her but she only married him to conceal her guilt in her aunt’s death. Teri too has a complicated past that will allow Walter to manipulate things so that she comes between Sam and a jaded Martha who now discovers she wants Sam. Badly. And what Martha wants, Martha gets. Or does she?
Superb performances by the great Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas, Van Heflin and newcomer Lizabeth Scott in only her second film keep this underrated noir moving toward a fatal reckoning.

Available free on Kanopy and Amazon Prime

Free parking on the street and adjacent lot

No after event is planned