Conspirator (1950)

"Silver Chalice" director Victor Saville's tepid Cold War espionage thriller "Conspirator" casts Robert Taylor as veteran British Guards officer who has fallen hopelessly in love with an impressionable, 18-year old American girl played by Elizabeth Taylor. This lackluster spy saga cannot conjure up a shred of credibility, and one can only hope that Humphrey Slater's novel that Gerald Fairlie and Sally Benson adapted was infinitely superior for what passes on screen. Ironically, the American born Taylor plays an Englishman, while the English born Elizabeth was cast as an American. Unfortunately, none of this irony permeated the film. She is a giddy young lady who meets Major Michael Curragh at a ball and falls for his 'ferociously" good looks, but Curragh doesn't realize that his Soviet handlers oppose his marital plans. Curragh insists that he can lead a split-existence, but his handlers warn him that a spy cannot have a wife who will interfere with his activities. Initially, Melinda Greyton (Elizabeth Taylor) believes that she can convince Michael to resign from the party. Michael's Soviet superior Radek (Karel Stepanek) orders the major to do away with his wife. As it turns out, Melinda has her beliefs that her husband is a traitor. Naturally, Michael struggles to explain his life-long participation in the Party. He lies to her at first that he has cut himself off from the Party, but Melinda learns that he has lied to her. Eventually, during a holiday duck hunt, Michael tries to kill her but he cannot bring himself to murder him. Melinda can only tolerate so much treachery and she goes to the authorities. Michael realizes the desperate predicament that he can gotten himself into and shoots himself rather than be taken into custody. The irony is that Michael's military superiors had caught of whiff of his seditious activities and were using him. They plead with Melinda to say that her husband committed suicide.The characters in "Conspirator" are hopelessly naïve about themselves. Michael has abandoned all sense of propriety and hoped that he could keep Melinda from learning anything about his nocturnal activities. Michael's handlers sent postcards of the old London Bridge when they wanted him to report to them with any useful information. Robert Taylor delivers a fine performance as a man caught between to political ideologies and at odds with his young wife. Elizabeth Taylor is appropriately paranoid about her husband after he appears to accidentally shoot her during the duck hunt. Future James Bond actress Honor Blackman plays Melinda's best friend. Saville keeps the action—as improbable as it is—flowing throughout this 87-minute yarn. "Conspirator" was shot on location in the United Kingdom. Altogether, Robert Taylor is wasted as a low-profile Communist. No surprises enliven this forgettable epic.

This post-war romantic drama is a slight disappointment mainly because it came at a really bad time in American history. Fear of the communists in Hollywood in the late 1940's saw the witch-hunt of McCarthyism, and one of those who allegedly named names was hunky actor Robert Taylor. Here, he plays an actual communist spy who marries an American girl (Elizabeth Taylor in her first leading lady role) then panics as he realizes her natural curiosity will lead her discover the truth about him. This seems like a great idea for a romantic drama, sort of a "Gaslight" with a political touch as he tries to keep her under wraps and his secret safe. But it goes down ordinary paths as he learns from his Russian comrades that the only way out is murder, which could have lead this to be more suspenseful than it is.The other major problem is that the two Taylors have absolutely no chemistry. Their first of two pairings, they aren't just of two different age groups, they have absolutely different mind-sets, and it is obvious that the young Liz is still a girl, even if she is one of the most striking ever to walk on this planet. Her actions indicate immaturity, not in a bad way, but she is still juvenile in nature, and certainly not a candidate for marriage. He seems smart enough to realize this, so why this ends up at the alter makes no sense. Their playful marital scenes are more embarrassing than romantic. By the time she made "A Place in the Sun" two years later, she was much more ready for adult romance, and had a much more appropriate screen partner to have it with.Marjorie Fielding is truly amusing as the elder Taylor's mischievous aunt, a crispy old broad who announces for all to hear that she is wearing a wig to cover her baldness. Her brief appearance marks one of the few times that the film wakes up to be actually amusing. That only happens otherwise when Wilfred Hyde White is on screen, he of course being most remembered as Colonel Pickering in the movie version of "My Fair Lady" 15 years later. There is really no motivation mentioned for Robert Taylor's character to be so into communism other than how he discovered a most bold new lifestyle when he was younger. This takes away the credibility of the plot that after such a war as World War II, he would betray his own country and smuggle secrets to the Russians, even if it was done in a most ingenious way.

Wow. After watching this I can see why it's not high on anyone's list for greatness. It's really not that good.Where to start. How about the mish mash of a script. They jump from one scene to the next without any explanation or lead-in. They go from the two just meeting to marriage to her finding out he's a spy for the commies. I mean there are a few times when he goes and sees his handlers and such but there really needed to be more filler in this one to have and heart to it. More depth I guess. The acting performances are pretty average all the way through.Maybe it was the script that did the editing in but some scenes jump together way too fast. They give you no time to get into the feel of each scene. To get involved as it were.I think the only standout thing about this film at how boring and forgettable it really is. It was flat as a pancake all the way through. Robert and Elizabeth Taylor have both done better works than this by a country mile. Seek them out and run far away from this one.

While on vacation in England a young American woman (Elizabeth Taylor) meets and later marries a British military officer (Robert Taylor) who turns out to be a Soviet spy. He is too deeply in with the Soviets whose agents liked him better when he was single and instruct him to get rid of her. There is not much of a sense of peril generated, but the film develops a fair degree of tension when Elizabeth Taylor's character discovers the truth about her husband, as the Soviets warned him she would. The crux of the film seems to deal more with his emotional needs that conflict with his Marxist political ideals, though those ideals and the whole existence of being a spy and traitor to one cause while being coldly manipulated by agents of the other could have been done more convincingly (see The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) or one of Carol Reed's tortured espionage tinged films. Nonetheless, it's a pretty decent part for Robert Taylor while somewhat shortchanging Elizabeth's.