Movie Screening & Discussion - The Conspirator

Join Marcus Renna in the Scott Room for a screening and discussion of the 1949 film noir and spy thriller The Conspirator. Directed by Victor Saville, written by Sally Benson and Gerald Fairlie, and starring Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor, The Conspirator is based on the 1948 novel of the same name by Humphrey Slater.

Young American socialite Melinda Greyton (Elizabeth Taylor) attends a Regimental Ball in the UK just a few years after World War II. There she meets the dashing Major Michael Curragh (Robert Taylor) and the whirlwind romance ensues. After they are married, however, Melinda discovers that her husband is actually spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. She confronts him and asks that he choose between their marriage and his ideology. A wrenching decision is forced when his Soviet handlers orders him to kill his wife.

Espionage thrillers were particularly popular in the wake of World War II, both from high profile cases involving British officers convicted of spying for Nazi Germany and due to increasing anxiety over the rise of the Cold War. The Conspirator is notable as Elizabeth Taylor's first mature role after a string of success as a child and teenage actress in the 1940s.

An excellent look at the beginning of the long career of Elizabeth Taylor and a peek inside the paranoid mindset of spies and secrets at the dawn of the Cold War.