The Big Sleep 1946

It was 1946 and film noir was everywhere, from low budget quickies to major studio releases. Of course, the studios didn’t realize they were making films noir, since that term had just been coined by French film critic Nino Frank. The noirs of 1946 included: The Killers, The Blue Dahlia, The Big Sleep, Gilda, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Stranger, The Dark Mirror, The Black Angel and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers was an “A” picture from Paramount, produced by Hal B. Wallis. It featured a terrific cast, including Barbara Stanwyck (who’d been in the classic noir Double Indemnity two years prior), Van Heflin, smoky-voiced Lizabeth Scott, Judith Anderson and, in his film debut, a young actor named Kirk Douglas. It’sa terrific picture with wonderful dialogue, elegant direction and great performances – it’s noir, it’s melodrama, and the whole film crackles with electricity. And perfectly capturing every mood, every character and every situation is the classic score by Miklós Rózsa. The music for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is almost a second cousin to Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, filled with the incredible Rózsa sound of that era.