Conspirator (1950)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Fresh and Exciting

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Blistering performances.

A teenage American hottie arrives for a visit to the UK and fall in love with a 38-year-old English military man. For some unclear reason he falls for her as well, so they get married.The teen wife, however, soon learns that her perfecto husband is in fact a Soviet spy. How does she learn it? Well, she finds in his pocket a typed letter saying – and I quote almost verbatim – "In view of my success in obtaining secret information for the USSR, I'd like to have a personal interview with the head of Soviet intelligence." I'm not kidding – the letter was not coded in any way, and it had the word "Soviet" printed in plain language. Poor Liz, finding and reading it, literally blanches. Her hubby is a Russian spy! He's a traitor! It's unclear, however, as to why the word "traitor" should have any strong meaning for her – she's not from the UK, but from another country altogether, so she's basically a traitor herself – betraying her motherland on a whim of romance.Ah, traitors… This word features prominently in an earlier scene where a bunch of guys discuss intelligence matters. "They are criminals!" an older dude proclaims angrily. I wonder why such strong emotion concerning treason, seeing as England has not been in a serious defensive war since 1760s. (The only exceptions are Napoleon 1812 and Hitler 1940 – and in both those cases it was Russia who saved the British ass from becoming enslaved by France and Germany.) There were tons of AGGRESSIVE wars of course – but is it appropriate to talk about criminal behavior when your country's been slaughtering innocent folks all over the globe for centuries? Poor Russia in this movie is presented as a Sort-of-Enemy, while America's presented as an ally. Weird considering that Russia never ever fought England nor betrayed it crassly, while the Americans both fought it and betrayed it - by signing the Declaration of Independence.The Founding Fathers of America are doubtless the biggest English traitors ever. Biggest. Traitors. Ever. Because of them, Britain lost millions of miles of fabulous land, trillions of pounds in money, incalculable amounts of mineral resources, and had its military and geopolitical prestige undermined forever. But let bygones be bygones, I guess.In a conversation with friends where both husbands and wife were present, Liz says contemptuously : "My husbands decided to give up his career – he's gonna be a Communist instead." Everybody present thinks it's a joke on her part, of course, but Liz is full of venom. Those terrible commies! It doesn't bother her that she, an 18-year-old girl, is served around the house by a lady in her mid-fifties – she never for a moment questions the justice of it. "No one is, like, forcing her to serve me, right? Let her eat cake or whatever." Yeah, servants are great; commies suck.But on the whole, taking into account the time and historical circumstances when this movie was made, it's a pretty decent picture with a number of effective scenes and a passable performance from ET – something that not all her movies can boast.

Great plot, great movie. I can see that the commies in Hollywood would not like it, and it was banned in Finland, which was highly influenced by the Stalinists in Russia at the time.With a background in political science and history, I can say that there really is a lot of realism in this movie. It was not at all uncommon for lifelong spies to be betrayed by their own need for love. And, the naive attitude of the Taylor character in seeking help from the Ruskies (remember, with STALIN in charge, was not at all unusual.The attitude of the Brits, who had been watching him all along, is also pretty typical of real situations.My wife particularly liked Taylor cast against type, and we both thought that Liz did a great job, as well as Taylor, in this pretty exciting and dramatic film.

Elizabeth Taylor is a lovely, vibrant American woman who falls in love with older Communist spy Robert Taylor in "Conspirator," a British film that was Elizabeth Taylor's entry into adult stardom. She received her first screen kiss, in fact, from co-star Robert Taylor - not bad, but then, this is Elizabeth Taylor we're talking about.The stars and supporting players (including a very young Honor Blackman) aren't the problem. For me the script and therefore the character actions are questionable. Elizabeth is supposed to be passionately in love with her new husband, as well as insecure and naive. On learning Taylor, a British officer, is a Communist, she grows up fast. We're told. We really don't see it, nor are we given an idea of how much time has passed to give her an opportunity to reach this new maturity. We're supposed to believe he was unable to stave her off with some tall story? Also, for a superficial young woman interested in redecorating her house, she certainly is suddenly a very committed patriot. As for Robert Taylor, a man who's been involved with the party for so many years would certainly have known the trouble he'd be in for failing to carry out orders and how bad it would look to beg for help and make excuses. Come on.There's nothing wrong with the acting, and Elizabeth Taylor is dazzlingly beautiful, though in my opinion, it will be a couple of more years before her beauty truly is at its height. But she certainly performs her adult role well. Robert Taylor is appropriately dashing and menacing, with his widow's peak, something my mother always mentioned about him, in full prominence. They certainly made a beautiful couple. But in "Conspirator," alas, they're not meant to be.

(Some Spoilers) Uninteresting suspense/drama that has all-American heart throb and US government friendly witness Robert Taylor as the British turncoat and sleazy communist spy Maj. Michael Curragh. Who in order to show his loyalty to the great "Cause and Movement" is ordered to murder his gorgeous young wife Melinda, Elizabeth Taylor. Who caught on to his spying and is a threat not only to Michael but to the Communist cell in London that he's a member of. Melinda at first going completely banana's over the handsome and dashing Major Michael after meeting him at a big social gathering in which no man there even bothered to ask her or a dance! they must have been either blind or crazy or both! Michael and Melinda hit it off right away and before you know it their married and living happily after after or so we, or they, thought. Melinda quickly caught on to Michael, and his secret life, but at first she thought that he was cheating with another woman behind her back. When Melinda took some bills from his pocket, to pay for a gift that she bought for him, she found a note going to his handler, Commie London spy chief Radek (Karel Stepanek), about the latest secret military strategy report of the UK & UK. Michaels communist handlers ware already ticked off at Michael for marrying Melinda without telling them about it, as well as not inviting them to the marriage ceremony. Now with her snooping around into his business with them he was given a direct order to do her in once in for all and leave no fingerprints of himself or his involvement with them behind. Michael later tries to shoot and kill Melinda at a duck hunt when he took her to his Aunt Jessica's, Marjorie Fielding, place out in the country but chickened out and just shot over her head. Or was it, like he explained to his bosses, after his hunting dog distracted him only knocking Melinda out. Were told by Michael that his dedication to the communist movement goes back to his days as a youth in Ireland where he fell under the spell of the ideas of Marx & Engles. As well as Michael's dreams of being a part of the greatest social experiment in the history of the world! Yet just one look at the beautiful Melinda showed him just how much BS that great revelation in human evolution, on his part, was. Now Michael got lost in the fog of his own muddled half-baked and self-delusional thoughts.It later turned out that it wasn't necessary for Melinda to turn Michael in to the authorities since the British M15 already knew about his communist activities long before he even met her. All this became moot with Michael seeing himself deserted by Melinda, as well as the local commie spy cell, beat them to the punch with a self-inflicted gun-shot wound to his head. It was hard to believe that Elizabeth Taylor was still in her teens, she was 17 at the time, when she made "Conspirator" back in 1949. She not only was beautiful beyond words but also a far more mature young woman then her age actually indicated.