One of the great film noirs, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, introduces us to three people bound together by the events of a single violent night—and then shows how that secret shapes their adult lives. In 1920s Iverstown, young Martha Ivers lives under the tyrannical rule of her wealthy aunt. One stormy night, the aunt is killed. Martha, her timid tutor‑in‑training Walter, and streetwise runaway Sam are all present—but the truth of who struck the fatal blow becomes the film’s central moral fault line. Walter’s ambitious father manipulates the situation, crafting a version of events that protects Martha and positions Walter for a future in politics. Sam, the only outsider, flees town. Years later, Sam (Van Heflin) drifts back into Iverstown by accident. He finds Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) now married to Walter, running the family empire with icy poise. Walter (Kirk Douglas, in his film debut) is now the district attorney, alcoholic, brittle, and terrified of the secret that underpins his entire life. Sam’s return destabilizes the marriage. Martha sees in him a chance at escape—or rekindled passion. Walter sees a threat that could expose everything. A fourth character—Toni (Lizabeth Scott), a vulnerable ex‑con Sam befriends—grounds the story emotionally and gives Sam a moral anchor.
Stanwyck gives one of her most controlled, lethal performances, and Douglas’s debut is astonishing – he plays Walter as a man who has been dying for years, a man whose entire identity is built around Martha—not as a heterosexual partner, but as someone who has fused his sense of self to hers in a way that feels more like a closeted emotional bond than a marriage. Barbara Stanwyck’s Martha is one of the great queer-coded femmes of the 1940s. Her attraction to Sam is less romantic than territorial—she wants him as a symbol of the freedom she was denied. She is dominant, strategic, and emotionally armored. She occupies the “masculine” role in the marriage: she controls the money, the politics, the narrative.
This is a classic queer-coded triangle where desire is displaced, redirected, and sublimated. The marriage between Martha and Walter is a façade built on a shared secret, not intimacy. Sam’s reappearance exposes the emotional truth: they are bound to each other by guilt, not love.
Directed with great style by Lewis Milestone.
Screenplay by Robert Rossen based on an original motion picture story by John Patrick
Cinematography: Victor Milner
Paramount
