sddavis63 Melinda Greyton (Elizabeth Taylor) is visiting England from America and meets Major Michael Curragh (Robert Taylor) at a fancy ball. It's a case of love at first sight for both and they end up married. First you have to set aside the discomfort of the age difference between the two. Elizabeth was 17 when this was made (playing an 18 year old) and Robert was 38 (playing a 31 year old.) It's not really that much of a problem. There's no real scenes of intimacy - or even much of affection - between them, but you certainly notice it. The story revolves around Melinda becoming gradually suspicious of some of her new husband's activities and finally discovering that he's actually a communist, and a Soviet spy, feeding information to Moscow about British and American defence plans. The movie then deals with the consequences of her discovery for them both.As spy capers go, it's not especially thrilling. It's actually rather slow paced, and the story itself isn't all that riveting. In the first half of the movie really all that we glean is that being a member of the Communist Party is a real drag on your personal life. But both Taylors put on performances that make it worth watching. Elizabeth - in what seems to have been her first "adult" role - did a fine job portraying Melinda's evolution from a naive and innocent young girl who's completely smitten by Curragh to a more worldly woman who's suspicious of and even frightened by Curragh. She had a much more illustrious career to come, but this certainly shows her potential as an actress. Robert was effective in showing what were essentially the two different sides of Curragh - the romantic and sometimes even playful man who fell so easily in love, and the hardened communist agent whose love for his young bride was second to his devotion to his ideology. Robert did a good job of showing Curragh as a man torn between those two loyalties and his portrayal of a communist agent was somewhat ironic, given that he himself was virulently anti-communist who helped out so-called "reds" in the movie business to the House Un-American Activities Committee."Conspirator" certainly isn't a classic spy film, but it does do a reasonably effective job of building (albeit somewhat slowly) to its eventual climax. (6/10)

filmklassik This is as much a response to samhill5215's review of CONSPIRATOR as it is a review of the film itself. Sam Hill seems to think that paranoia about Soviet infiltration of the West was unjustified, even though around the same time this film was being made (1949) the Rosenbergs were selling nuclear secrets to the Russians and Philby was funneling intel to them from his perch over in England.Sam wonders why Elizabeth Taylor's character -- who the film paints as being naive and apolitical -- would be rattled to discover that she'd married a Soviet spy. I wonder if Sam would be making the same observation if the time line were adjusted to World War II and Taylor had learned her husband was a Nazi.I suppose it matters not to Sam that Mao and Stalin together killed approximately 94 million people. 94. Million.Nine-four, Sam. Million. The number is beyond staggering. It defies belief.Adolph Hitler, one of the most evil humans of the 20th century, was a piker by comparison.But according to Sam, regardless of this kind of unprecedented barbarity, Liz's character was just a Silly Billy to care so much.Unbelievable.The movie itself is okay, but far from great. It's well photographed and professionally acted... the story is intriguing... but it all feels rather insubstantial, as if several important scenes were missing.Perhaps it got butchered in the editing room.Too bad. Like samhill's review.

mark.waltz 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.

sol (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.