Odd title to this movie. There's never any love in the Martha Ivers' circle. She never got enough chance in early life to become acquainted with the real article. Her dye is already cast by the time the old boyhood friend shows up again. You only get to actual love with Sam and Toni, or especially Sam for Toni. He's a sensitive and caring fellow. Martha needed his influence for that reason. Maybe he could have helped her be human had he been able to stay around early on.
I had trouble focusing on the unfoldings at the beginning due to recognition of the aunt, Judith Anderson. Why, that's Mrs. Danvers from "Rebecca." Same creepy type of woman.
**Possible spoiler paragraph** It is interesting to watch this again with what you learn from the first viewing. About Sam, that is, and what he doesn't know. You watch it the first time with everyone thinking that Sam is back to cash in on what he knows about the aunt's demise. You know better than that, that the return is accidental and the revisit spontaneous. But you have no reason not to think he saw what happened on the stairs. Then, he seems pretty indifferent to the event as he reacquaints. You think, well, he doesn't care. But then we learn that he left the house before it happened. Now, watch it again with that in mind.
Everyone notices Kirk Douglas. He's so attractive you wish for him to be a more virile character. Didn't have to wait very long for that to come about. There were a couple more weak guy roles, and then he took off with mastery. And, a case could be made for it requiring ability to play a weak person as well as a stronger one.
Van Heflin - Something very attractive about him. He was almost always a guy with inner stability, aiding the balance of those around him, usually women. To me, that inner quality WAS his attractiveness. He's the one that could always walk into a mess and immediately start sorting it out.
Lizabeth Scott had a certain strong allure that seemed could have gone best with a stronger character. I don't have much patience with the pathetic drama she dishes out here. Those weepy, tragic type dames showed up a lot in the streetwise pictures of the era, and I always found them irritating. Usually, they have some guy like Heflin trying to bolster them up because some bully type is grinding them down. If you ask me, that type is asking to be ground. "Good grief; give it a rest, sister," I say to the screen. Oh well, nowadays we can fast forward.
Barbara Stanwyck is at the height of her beauty here or maybe one of her more glamorous roles. She seemed slated to be an evil woman or remembered most for those roles. In contrast, I recall her in an early picture called "The Mad Miss Manton," in which she is an airhead bounding around all over the place. That was really enjoyable, but it was a type that she would naturally move away from to go on to other things. But she was really fun to watch in that.
If you don't mind walking on the dark side a bit, this is an interesting one to watch.
