What is it to want love so badly you’ll go to obscene, self-destructive lengths to get it? Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson/Barbara Stanwyck)–who frequently expresses a preference to be addressed by her deceased father’s last name, Smith–at thirteen, knew something of what it meant. Having hatched a plan to run away for the umpteenth time from her horrid, elitist aunt Mrs. Ivers (Judith Anderson). As her only living relative left, Mrs. Ivers’ assumption of guardianship over Martha takes a domineering hold, and all Martha can ever dream of is escape. Escape that a boy as street smart as Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) can secure for her by hiding her away in the circus train due to leave that very rainy night from Iverstown. Yes, the Pennsylvania mining hub is named for the Iverses, a testament to the wealth associated with the family moniker. But money and power are irrelevant to Martha, who can only dream of freedom and love. Because she does love Sam, and, as most will tell you, no love is more enduring, more long-lasting in its effects than first love.
Walter O’Neil Sr. (Roman Bohnen) can’t wrap his head around Martha’s constant ingratitude, wishing for only a fraction of her riches to wield for the benefit of his son, Walter Jr. (Mickey Kuhn/Kirk Douglas). With the former being Martha’s tutor, he is constantly angling for a way to get more out of the old lady, like suggesting he and his son move into the house to better “accommodate” Martha. Mrs. Ivers can see right through his machinations, having no sympathy for Walter Jr.’s lack of opportunities in the same way Martha will have them. She especially hates the poor, ragamuffin likes of Sam, who comes back for Martha that September 27th of 1928 after her aunt has the police fish her out of the boxcar she’s hiding in. Walter Jr. is the one to let him in through the window, the timid third wheel between them. When Martha’s kitten (Mrs. Ivers hates cats, and probably all animals) slinks out of the room as she’s discussing a new getaway plan with Sam, she urges him to go and fetch the creature before Mrs. Ivers sees him. Scared himself that he’ll be caught by the old lady and tossed into some godforsaken orphanage, he goes after the cat regardless (a testament to his love for Martha, one might say). And of course, she hears the “ruckus” on the stairs, prompting Sam to hide behind the banister.
Seeing the kitten instead, Mrs. Ivers proceeds to beat it with her cane. It’s some real evil old spinster shit that now “classic” movies were fond of showcasing as a means to solidify the trope that if you were a single woman too long, you were sure to become a bitter old maid. Bitter enough to kill an innocent creature. Yet apparently that’s not a trait limited to elderly women in this film, so much as a family characteristic, for Martha, in retaliation, canes Mrs. Ivers to death right back. Walter Jr. watches the entire harrowing affair unfold, and, when it’s over (Sam having long ago scurried away to catch the circus train out of town without having witnessed anything), proves his love for Martha to be greater (if not sicker) than Sam’s by corroborating her account of the story to Walter Sr. Of course, Walter Sr. doesn’t really believe a random man appeared at the door and started beating Mrs. Ivers, but he’s willing to go along with it if it means he can attach himself and his son to Martha’s tit, sucking from her newfound inheritance.
As for Sam, it seems clear he made the right choice in abandoning Martha, for any involvement with her fails to evade a conniving web spun by the spidery character that only Stanwyck could play. In the eighteen years since he absconded, Sam became an itinerant gambler, living on his wits and loving every moment of the freedom that Martha would never know. Happening to pass through Iverstown in his car (with Blake Edwards playing a hitchhiking sailor), he gets so distracted by suddenly realizing he’s near his old town again that he crashes. So, naturally, he has to take the car to the body shop in Iverstown. Hoping to be able to leave the following morning, he mucks about his old stomping grounds with a chuckling air, as though disbelieving that he could have ever spent any amount of time in such a middling place.
Curious about his former home (even though that might be too strong a word considering his relationship with his parents), he walks over to it after dropping the car off to see that it’s been turned into a women’s boarding house, with a very femme creature indeed lingering outside: Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott, with a face made to be captured in the glamorous, soft focus close-ups of film noir). As the two get to talking per that old school method that’s no longer applicable in the present–via bumming a cigarette–the connection between them is evident. Evident enough for Toni to say fuck it about making her bus to Ridgeville where, unbeknownst to Sam, she is expected to show up per the conditions of her parole, being the freshly sprung from the slammer dame that she is.
Interwoven with the budding romance of Sam and Toni is the ever diseased and fledgling marriage of Walter Jr. and Martha. Running for re-election as Attorney General, Walter Jr. chooses not to show up for a speaking event, with Martha finding him drunk in the Ivers mansion. Confessing that he still feels the guilt and anguish over having convicted a man (the phantom of Martha’s girlhood story materializing fortuitously when they were adults) for a crime he didn’t commit. Having him hang for it. Martha is less contrite, insisting he was a degenerate anyway.
“If you carry a thing in your mind, it makes you sick. I want you well,” Martha tells Walter, posturing to send him away to some institution where he can dry out. In fact, every move Martha makes seems aimed to either hurt Walter or get rid of him–make him love her less. Yet the more he loves her in the face of her diabolical nature, the more she can’t stand him. As though wanting him to give her the punch across the face she knows she deserves. The punch that Sam wouldn’t be afraid to give.
As the guilt of Walter Jr. and the lustful desire for freedom Martha still associates with Sam build to a fever pitch, Toni gets caught up in the drama as she falls for Sam. The question is, will Sam be as courageous as he was when he was thirteen–willing to leave Iverstown without ever looking back? If his frequent reference to Lot’s wife is an indication, he should surely know better than to have any sense of sentimentality for Iverstown and its two most prominent members, shadowy figures of amorality. And where film noir is concerned, those are the parties who always ultimately get their comeuppance–whether by fate, or their own self-defeating hand.
