(1946; b/w) How could I not watch this film? Why has it taken me so long? Based on an original story by Jack Patrick, no less, we begin in Iverstown (probably somewhere in Ohio or Pennsylvania) with "E P IVERS" in big lighted letters above a railway yard on September 27th, 1928.

Why is the date so memorable eighteen years later when Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) returns? Because back then on a stormy night, he and Martha as young adolescents had again attempted to run off together. Caught in a boxcar, Martha was brought back to her aunt's house by the police for the fourth time, while Sam slipped away. Another boy, though he would deny such to Martha, Walter O'Neil had tattled on them.

Martha's elderly aunt, Mrs Ivers (Judith Anderson), rebukes her niece for sullying the family name with her misconduct. "My name is Smith," retorts Martha, "the same as my father." Having disapproved of her sister's marrying a milk hand, Mrs Ivers changed the orphaned Martha's surname to her own and raised her in a strict fashion.

Upstairs in her bedroom while talking with Walter, who has brought up her kitten, as Martha changes from her wet clothes, Sam taps on the window and the lights go out. When the kitten gets loose, Sam goes downstairs to retrieve it; in the dark Martha's aunt begins up the stairs where she encounters the kitten, attacking it with her cane. Coming down the stairs, Martha grabs the cane from her aunt's hand and strikes her over the head with it, knocking the old woman down the stairs.

Walter's father, who also had been in the house, finds Mrs Ivers to be dead. After Martha invents a story of a big man coming in and attacking her aunt, Mr O'Neil, a school teacher, coaches the two children in advance of the police investigation.

Sam is nowhere to be seen until he reappears in 1946 with a wrecked automobile: the road curved and he didn't. First he notices Walter's name and picture on a poster as district attorney running for re-election. Second he meets Antonia "Toni" Marachek (Lizabeth Scott, looking like a slightly used version of Lauren Bacall), just out of prison for stealing (unjustly charged), with whom he has a drink before they check into adjoining rooms in the hotel. Third he's reunited with his childhood chums, Walter (Kirk Douglas in his film debut) and Martha O'Neil (Barbara Stanwyck), in the DA's office after the cops have questioned him; he's come to ask Walter for a favor of squaring the violation of probation for Toni.

Martha, who has transformed the inheritance from her aunt into a power establishment, and Walter question whether or not Sam, a war hero with rank of sergeant and professional gambler, saw the murder. "Sam will never tell," Martha says to her husband. Walter, however, suspects blackmail's on Sam's mind.

In an effort to unlock his memory and his heart, Martha has a colloquy with Sam, comparing the time between: "What do you want? Why did you come back?" Uncertain of believing his saying he doesn't want anything, just passing through on his way west, she says: "I'm sorry that you left here."

Meanwhile, Walter interrogates Toni, threatening her with five years of prison if she doesn't cooperate. After the set up (a guy joins Sam and Toni in a restaurant claiming to be her husband), Sam takes a beating. Back in town he again finds Toni about to get on a bus: "I don't like to get pushed around. I don't like anybody to get pushed around," he tells her. Sam, running a coin in and out of his fingers, has been given a reason to look a long way back into that September night, betting his life without knowing how it's going to finish.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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