The Conspirators

You know that Warner Brothers - once they have their hands on a hot property, they slice it, dice it, and put it in the Mixmaster. Just look at the three versions of "The Maltese Falcon." Now it's wartime, and that hot property is, of course "Casablanca." In "The Conspirators," part of that magnificent cast is reunited - Paul Henried, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre - in this story of a Dutch freedom fighter, Vincent Van der Lyn, in neutral Lisbon and having trouble figuring out who wants to help him and who wants to hurt him. The suspects are Greenstreet, the head of a resistance group, Lorre, one of its members, and the exquisite Hedy Lamarr, married to a Nazi official.

The story is harder to follow and ultimately, the film is not as good as "Joan of Paris," another World War II film starring Henried, but it still has great atmosphere and is fairly intriguing. There just isn't enough of Greenstreet or Lorre, one of the great screen teams. Paul Henried, a very useful actor during World War II while the stars were away, does a good job as Van der Lyn. Lamarr is positively outrageously beautiful - no, she's not much of an actress - it's a face made for the closeup, and one can just look at her forever. What she brings is a certain enigmatic quality, probably by default, but who cares.

If this pops up on TCM, you won't be sorry you saw it, but you won't be swept away either.