The New Pictures

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Hal Wallis-Paramount) is described by its own pressagents as "a stealthy plot of murder, false witness, assault, lust, perfidy and tender love." The summary is too modest. The picture also includes some tidy touches of sadism, juvenile delinquency, blackmail, civic corruption, adultery and dipsomania.

The story begins back in 1928, when most of the film's principal characters are mere problem children. The youngsters get older but never any better adjusted. The little girl who inadvertently murders her horrid old aunt grows up to be a wealthy, power-mad, neurotic woman (Barbara Stanwyck), living fretfully with a bad conscience and a weakling husband (Broadway Actor Kirk Douglas). Meanwhile, the little boy from the wrong side of the tracks has grown up to be tough, tinhorn Gambler Van Heflin.

These ruthless, wretched people finally knot themselves up in such a tangle that the only way out for the plot is one more quick round of murder and suicide. The film's most law-abiding character is Lizabeth Scott, a blonde jailbird who looks suitably stunned by all the perfidy, lust and other such carryings-on.

As a high-class strumpet, Barbara Stanwyck does her usual easy, convincing job. Van Heflin, back on the screen after three years in the Army, makes the hard-shelled gambler plausible. Lizabeth Scott, a onetime fashion model, is no worse--and not noticeably better--than the other delectable, deadpan ex-models (e.g., Warner's Lauren Bacall, 20th Century-Fox's Nancy Guild) who are currently being peddled to the public as dramatic actresses.

In spite of biting off more wholesale villainy than it could possibly chew, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is strangely good in detail. The steady hand of Producer Hal Wallis, an able craftsman, shows up in some excellent individual scenes, the picture's considerable suspense and its high, overall polish.

But in case Junior and Sister get the idea that it might be fun to see, suggest a nice Technicolor musical instead.

Centennial Summer (20th Century-Fox), which aims at being a bouncy summertime diversion, has everything it takes except bounce. Pretty as a candy box, the picture oozes rich Technicolor, Jerome Kern music, crunchy-sweet humor and double-scoop romance. Its seven big-name players, dressed to the teeth in fetching costumes, cavort through costly 1876 sets.

All the effort never conjures up enough magic to lift a would-be airy movie very far off the ground. One obvious reason: Centennial Summer is loaded down with the self-conscious weight of a million dollars-plus investment. (By now, the investment seems a pretty sure thing: the trade press has already cheerfully promised movie exhibitors that Centennial Summer means "big grosses . . . marquee lure . . . money picture . . . box-office success.")

The film's quartet of young lovers--who pair off wrong in the beginning and eventually have to be reshuffled--are Jeanne Grain, Cornel Wilde, Linda Darnell and William Eythe. More mature romantic types are played by Constance Bennett, Dorothy Gish and Walter Brennan. The plot works hard to prove that the course of true love rarely runs smooth. No up-to-date writer of movie fan mail will be greatly surprised to learn that Cornel Wilde (his studio's male champion receiver of fan letters) gets a last-reel embrace from Jeanne Grain (fan mail runner-up to her studio's female champion Betty Grable).

One of Centennial Summer's outstanding virtues: the unpretentious plugging of its pleasant music (one of the late Composer Jerome Kern's final movie chores before his death in 1945). No melody is bellowed from a stage or smothered in a big production number. Every song is tossed off, impromptu style, by whatever talent happens to be standing around at cue time. Even Constance Bennett, who presumably never took a singing lesson in her life, has a fling at it.

This unusual song-selling technique keeps the story moving with carefree charm. But it's brutal on the tunes. Of all eight new Kern melodies (including the already popular All Through the Day and In Love in Vain), not one sounds good enough to compete with Ol' Man River or Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

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