The Conspirators (1944)

Thanks for the memories!

Fantastic!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

No matter how hard they tried Warner Brothers just could not duplicate the magic that was Casablanca. They tried it was in Background To Danger where George Raft who was considered for Humphrey Bogart's role got the lead. It was a routine action/adventure film set in Turkey.In The Conspirators this time it was Hedy Lamarr who was originally considered for Ingrid Bergman's part finally made it to Warner Brothers. She is the wife of Victor Francen who is a German embassy official and both are part of an underground group which Sidney Greenstreet heads and Peter Lorre is also a member.Into all their lives comes Dutch resistance fighter Paul Henreid and the two have big eyes for each other, but there is a traitor in that little underground group who is spoiling things all around political, geographic and personal. A murder is committed and Henreid is the suspect and both the underground and the Portugese police in the persons of Eduardo Ciannelli and Joseph Calleia are on his trail.The atmosphere of intrigue in World War II Lisbon just as in World War II Casablanca is nicely created by director Jean Negulesco. But the magical chemistry of Bogey and Bergman just isn't there. Like Background To Danger, The Conspirators is just another action/adventure film with an exotic background.

Often problem with these war time made WW II movies was that they were all basically the same. They of course all had a different story but were still all the same in terms of storytelling, overall style and character portrayals. In that regard "The Conspirators" is one of those dozens of typical made war time made movies about WW II.The movie features a quite messy disjointed story, involving Nazi's, underground fighter's, a romance and one traitor. It also is nothing too spectacular or original.The movie once more features both Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. They played in quite a few movies together in the '40's, of which of course the most notable ones were "Casablanca" (also starring Paul Henreid) and "The Maltese Falcon". My only complaint is that their roles are being pushed too much to the background. It focuses too much on Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid and their romance, which just isn't the most convincing or interesting element of the movie. Especially Lamarr is dreadful and feels terribly out of place within this movie.I must admit that the ending is absolutely fantastic though, which involves a game of roulette, with the resistance fighters sitting across a couple of Nazi's, while it is known that one of the resistance fighters is a mole and traitor and must pass a message to the Nazi's within 10 minutes, while they are playing the roulette. It probably sounds very James Bond like to you know but trust me if I say that this is one great and tense build up sequences, that forms a perfect finale for the movie, even though the movie does not end right after it.The movie as a whole just isn't always the most fast going one and therefore it also doesn't make this movie the most exciting or tense movie within its genre.Still of course the movie remains a perfectly watchable enough one.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

All the ingredients that made CASABLANCA such a mega-hit are present in THE CONSPIRATORS, but not one of the ingredients is able to put the film over the top as a story of intrigue, espionage and romance.What's surprising is that the film fails to sustain interest despite a great supporting cast that includes PETER LORRE, SYDNEY GREENSTREET and VICTOR FRANCEN. Also surprising is the fact that it's directed by Jean Negulesco, who did such a brilliant job on the direction of JOHNNY BELINDA. The script is a talky, muddled bit of contrivances and clichés, with Henried as a Dutch freedom fighter in Lisbon clashing with the Nazis and falling under the spell of a beautiful woman who guards her secrets.HEDY LAMARR is lovely, of course, but her characterization is so paper-thin that all we can really see is her exotic glamor, without much passion or feeling below the make-up. Nor is PAUL HENRIED seen at his best, more remote than usual in what should have been a much stronger role but is dulled by a witless script and a co-star with whom he has very little chemistry.The convoluted plot doesn't give the supporting actors much to do and it's somewhat of a relief when the story comes to downbeat ending.

"The conspirators" (1944) directed by Jean Negulesco is a plot as old present past to liberate others whom were at the time imprisoned in a jail for scaring anybody else, that caught the viewer for a while in a very busy sequence interesting as example of hypocrisy from the ancient regime. All the darkness particularly in the night scene of the ball where as intruder one of the conspirators is there, where foreigners and local authorities are both entities in a pact, that this movie shows the reverse of the peaceful and apparatus of fake generosity. Within a sense of dramatic expression very sustained before the dangerous and strange move of the characters, facing a treachery for killing someone outside, it shows also the strength of this good screenplay. The contrast between a group of main characters disguised as contacts for something not entirely legal and the commodities that they are concerned with, for their purposes for raising income and by this way merchandising human freedom with some local authorities, it is got without the entire knowledge of the concerned people. From whom one of them meets some inhabitants by night, in an open party boom at a known beach in the outskirts with typical songs and cloths from local fishermen, collaborating now in a neutral country under dictatorship of a specific oligarchy. Preventing uprising in such a shadowy world it is obvious a kind of archaism without democratic stance by its architectonic similitude with a more liberal attitude for business by night under vaults, tunnels and climbs in an old city turned away to the ocean entry in Europe. Where under covered merchants - like in republican times twenty years before - living in a quiet and strange magic tranquility are in cohabitation, like searching an unknown royalty for their benefices out of the church influence in such a pause of war timed in 1943 just after last fascism schism, as only apparently in such a scale of mediocrity to make a living of the last resentment against an oppression less intensive than in other countries smashed nearby by an atmosphere of not far way mystery.