“Don’t look back, baby. Don’t ever look back.”

Young Martha Ivers shares a terrible secret with her two childhood friends, Sam Masterson and Walter O’Neil concerning the death of her Aunt. Years pass, and Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) is now married to District Attorney O’Neil (Kirk Douglas). They still live in Iverstown (named for Martha’s wealthy family). Their marriage is not a happy one, but it’s sealed by shared guilt. Martha is now the wealthiest woman in Iverstown, and she and her husband either own or control everything in this corrupt small town.

One night, a car accident strands Sam (Van Heflin) in Iverstown. It’s mere coincidence that he’s back after an absence of almost twenty years, but Walter and Martha assume he’s there to blackmail them. Their guilt alerts Masterson to the possibilities of the situation, and so he sets out to exploit it.

From director Lewis Milestone, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a classic entry in the genre of film noir. Kirk Douglas, in his first screen role, stars as Walter O’Neil. Obviously the studios did not yet have Douglas type-cast in the strong hero roles he later assumed. In this film, he plays mealy-mouthed O’Neil–a spineless man who’s pushed around by his wife. O’Neil’s love for his wife is sick and corrupted. He knows she despises him, but he’s going to hang onto her no matter what it takes. Lizabeth Scott stars as Toni–the girl Sam meets on his first night in town. Scott enjoyed a brief career–which was extinguished by an expose in Confidential magazine. Scott reminds me very much of Lauren Bacall, and this may sound like heresy, but I prefer Scott. She’s rough around the edges and seems to be the genuine article. If Bacall hangs out with low-lifes, she is just slumming, but Lizabeth Scott seems to belong with the dregs of society–just waiting for some man to rescue her and take her home. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to envision her as Toni–the hard luck girl who’s just released from jail.

Barbara Stanwyck is, of course, one of film noirs great leading ladies. She’s ice cold and cruel in this role. But there’s more to Martha than meets the eye. In Martha’s first hysterical scene with her aunt, we get a glimpse of the hard, heartless woman she’ll become. And yet Martha claims to love Sam–but her love is twisted and sick too. She’s not capable of loving anyone in any normal sense of the word. Van Heflin as Sam–is a cipher. He’s a WWII veteran with a checkered past. As a child, he dominated Walter, and when Sam blows back into town, he picks up where he left off. Yet ultimately, Walter and Sam seem to recognize each other’s position. The relationship between Martha, Sam, and Walter dominates this fascinating film. The DVD is excellent quality. For film noir fans, I wholeheartedly recommend The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. It’s a fantastic film

“So you’ve already started spending it.”

Jane Palmer (Lizabeth Scott) and her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy) are out one evening, when a bag of money literally lands in the back seat of their car. Alan wants to turn the money over to the police, but Jane sees it as the answer to all their problems. Jane persuades Alan to at least hide the money until they decide what to do with it. He gives in to her pleading, but then after she goes on a spending spree, he decides to hand the money over to the police. Jane is determined to keep it, and that means she’ll get rid of anyone who stands in her way.

Jane is an incredible character. She’s cold, calculating and manipulative. From the start, when the money falls into her lap, she takes charge of the situation by grabbing the steering wheel and engaging in a high-speed chase. As a film noir femme fatale, she’s on a level with those other two great wicked women, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity) and Cora Smith (Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jane is bad, bad, bad.

Dan Duryea plays Danny Fuller, a hard-boiled, sleazy crook. He begins his relationship with Jane by pushing her around, but by the time she’s done with him, he’s in a perpetual drunken stupor, quivering, whining and obeying her orders. He feels guilty in spite of the fact that he tries to make light of their crimes by suggesting, “I say, let’s kill these people in style.” Danny might appear to be the brutal, muscle element of this criminal pair, but in reality, Jane dominates and controls their crimes. Both Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea are great favourites of mine. Scott really makes a great deal of this role. Too often, she gets stuck as the supporting actress, but here she’s in full force, and she shows exactly how well she can handle the starring role. She’s almost kittenish when she wants to be, but always that cold emotional detachment lurks underneath the surface–even when she’s turning on the charm. Too Late for Tears is one of my all-time film noir favourites. Dirceted by Byron Haskin.

“People were born to have certain things.”

In “Pitfall” middle-aged married insurance agent John Forbes (Dick Powell) is bored. He has a pretty, slightly nagging wife named Sue (Jane Wyatt), a precocious son Tommy, and a tidy little home in suburbia, but he feels as though he’s on a timed treadmill. Forbes’s tedious domestic life is shaken up when he meets the beautiful clothes model Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott).

Forbes is trying to recover $10,000 embezzled from a company by Bill Smiley (Byron Barr). Smiley is now in jail, but his girlfriend, Mona Stevens, is waiting for him. Forbes sends private detective MacDonald (Raymond Burr) to trace the missing money, and MacDonald returns with his report along with a glowing review of the beautiful, uncooperative Miss Stevens. Forbes goes to interview Mona and see if he can recover any money or goods bought with the stolen money.

Soon Forbes is lying to his wife about Mona, and MacDonald is jealously stalking both Mona and Forbes. Then tangled passions explode into violence ….

One of the best scenes in the film occurs when MacDonald arrives in Forbes’s office for the first time. There’s a sullen obsequiousness about MacDonald–like an untrained dog, he waits for a sign of approval from Forbes, and when none comes, he becomes resentful and misbehaves. It’s a tribute to Powell’s acting ability that his dislike for MacDonald is conveyed in such subtle, slightly dismissive ways.

With the insurance company theme, it’s impossible not to begin comparing “Pitfall” to “Double Indemnity”–one of the great noir films of all time. The characters in “Pitfall” are not quite as deeply explored as those in “Double Indemnity”–the emotionally detached Forbes doesn’t plunge into the deep end of evil–he sticks his big toe into the hot water of infidelity and then immediately tries to scramble back to shore. Mona Stevens possesses a vulnerability and fatalism that causes her to become a natural victim to the men in her life. The husky voiced Lizabeth Scott is one of my all-time favourite film noir actresses–how sad her career was ruined by rumors that she was a lesbian. Raymond Burr as the Machiavellian villain of the piece is well cast–one tends to forget how sinister he could be before assuming the Ironside persona.

“Pitfall” is a nice tidy little noir drama–definitely enjoyable and a must-see for connoisseurs, but Forbes and Stevens are too timidly rooted in socially accepted behaviour to make this film one of the all-time greats. (I’m thinking:  The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Narrow Margin, Double Indemnity…)