Critics reviews

The characters in this noir saga tend to harbor secrets and seethe with pent-up lust, which they articulate via Code-mandated code. It's pointedly sordid, though the story's moral tidiness impedes any sleazy thrills. One couple is damned in a Double Indemnity-echoing climax; the other finds redemption on the road out of town. It's an antiseptic movie yearning to be dirty.

A hybrid of film noir and the Gothic women's melodramas of the 1940s, a movie like this had to be in the worst of possible taste: if not, it might not work at all.

Arguably, Stanwyck never did another film, and certainly not another film noir, as good as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Her performance mixes ruthlessness with intense self-loathing.

The steady-as-she-goes direction is well paired with the soapy melodrama of Robert Rossen's screenplay; a more expressive vision might've sent this camp careering past the threshold of tolerability, like Van Heflin's DeSoto as he crashes into his hometown ("The road curved and I didn't").