Conspirator

United Kingdom

1949

87 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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SCR Sally Benson, Gerard Fairlie, Humphrey Slater

CAST Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Flemyng, Harold Warrender, Honor Blackman, Marjorie Fielding, Thora Hird, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Marie Ney, Jack Allen, Helen Haye, Cicely Paget-Bowman, Karel Stepanek, Nicholas Bruce, Cyril Smith, Michael Dear, Janette Scott, Bill Travers

London, 1949. A young American beauty, Melinda Greyton, flighty and immature, falls in love with a dashing but solitary and lonely English major, Michael Curragh, and he with her. His aged aunt, his only family, urges him to marry her, and he does. The trouble is, he’s an agent for the Soviets. His control is unhappy that he’s married without the Party’s consent. Melinda figures out he’s a spy and a traitor, and she develops some backbone and maturity when he tries to convince her to go along with him. She demands that he cease spying at about the same time that his control orders him to kill her. Is she safe? Is there any way he can satisfy conflicting loyalties? —IMDb

Director

Victor Saville

Victor Saville (25 September 1895 – 8 May 1979) was an English film director, producer and screenwriter. He directed 39 films between 1927 and 1954. He also produced 36 films between 1923 and 1962.

He produced his first film, Woman to Woman, with Michael Balcon in 1923, and on the back of its success produced pictures for the veteran director Maurice Elvey, including the classic British silent Hindle Wakes (1927). His first picture as director was The Arcadians in 1927. In 1929 he and Michael Balcon worked together again on a talkie remake of Woman to Woman for Balcon’s company, Gainsborough Pictures, this time directed by Saville himself.

From 1931, as Gainsborough Pictures and the Gaumont British Picture Corporation joined forces, Victor Saville produced a string of comedies, musicals and dramas for Gainsborough and Gaumont-British, including the popular Jessie Matthews pictures. In 1937 he left to set up his own production company, Victor Saville Productions, and made… read more

Victor Saville (25 September 1895 – 8 May 1979) was an English film director, producer and screenwriter. He directed 39 films between 1927 and 1954. He also produced 36 films between 1923 and 1962.

He produced his first film, Woman to Woman, with Michael Balcon in 1923, and on the back of its success produced pictures for the veteran director Maurice Elvey, including the classic British silent Hindle Wakes (1927). His first picture as director was The Arcadians in 1927. In 1929 he and Michael Balcon worked together again on a talkie remake of Woman to Woman for Balcon’s company, Gainsborough Pictures, this time directed by Saville himself.

From 1931, as Gainsborough Pictures and the Gaumont British Picture Corporation joined forces, Victor Saville produced a string of comedies, musicals and dramas for Gainsborough and Gaumont-British, including the popular Jessie Matthews pictures. In 1937 he left to set up his own production company, Victor Saville Productions, and made three pictures for Alexander Korda’s London Films at Denham studios.

As an independent producer he had purchased the film rights to A. J. Cronin’s novel The Citadel, and was persuaded to sell them to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in return for the chance to produce the film and another big-budget adaptation, Goodbye Mr Chips (1939). Both films starred Robert Donat and were a great success in the USA as well as in Britain, providing Saville with a passport to Hollywood.

When the war broke out he was in America and was advised to remain there, producing pictures in support of the war effort such as The Mortal Storm and Forever and a Day (in which he worked for the last time with his former star Jessie Matthews), and in 1945 Tonight and Every Night, based on the Windmill Theatre in London.

After the war he continued directing films for MGM but eventually returned to Britain. Saville acquired production rights for Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and produced a few features, though Spillane thought he only was interested in doing so to acquire the money to produce The Silver Chalice. He produced two final films in the 1960s, The Greengage Summer (1961) and Mix Me a Person (1962). —Wikipedia

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