Boring

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie is such a disappointment.There is a lot of talent here, especially in the acting dept but also in the cinematography. There are beautifully shot scenes. Hedy Lamarr is made to look beautiful almost past belief, not to mention very mysterious.But the script here is terrible. Really terrible. All the acting in the world could not save it. Yes, better directing could. Negulescu was certainly not Michael Curtiz.But it is the sometimes incoherent and always flat-footed script that does this movie in.Watch Casablanca again, even if it is for the 20th time. That's an astounding masterpiece. This is dead.

I really enjoyed this movie and it is one of my favorites for WWII intrigue. I consider this a sequel to Casablanca, taking off from where The Flying Dutchman left Casablanca and lands in Portugal. I liked enough that I bought the original book (searched and found it online). Definitely worth watching as it is also a good play on romanticism of the era.During World War 2 underground movements all through Europe helped thwart the Nazi movement. In this movie a portrayal of the underground in 'neutral' Portugal is similar to what went on in Europe. Only one cheesy scene in the move, where a secret security camera is used. But that is a brief scene and does not detract from the film.Because of this movie Paul Henreid is one of my favorite actors along side Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. My first viewing was on a Sunday morning when a local TV station aired the movie. Finally I was able to see it again and record from TCM.

This is a thoroughly adequate film and not much more. It was intended to try to capitalize on the success of CASABLANCA. Despite Warner Brothers trying to recapture the magic of this earlier film, THE CONSPIRATORS just can't compare--mostly due to a very poor script and some poor performances. Now the parallels to CASABLANCA are there but the film isn't a remake. Instead, it's a slight reworking of the ideas and a few plot points. Many of the stars in the film were actually originally in CASABLANCA (Paul Henreid, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorr).Henreid plays a Dutch freedom fighter who has escaped to neutral Portugal. His hope is to go from there to Britain, since he is a wanted man in Nazi occupied Europe. However, once in Lisbon, there is a long and complicated web of Nazis and anti-fascist operatives. Uncovering who were actually friends and who were double-agents was the main theme of the film.As for Henreid and Hedy Lamarr, they are agreeable enough people but just don't have the charisma to make us forget Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman from CASABLANCA. Henreid isn't really bad--he just isn't Bogie. As for Lamarr, she is the weakest link in the film. Like so many of her films, she is essentially a walking mannequin--wearing lots and lots of expensive costumes (common for her films) but also delivering a rather flat and emotionless performance. Had the part been written more multi-dimensionally, perhaps she would have been a greater asset to the film. Aside from her beauty, she added little to the film--especially since her romance with Henried seemed to come out of nowhere and there was little chemistry between them.As for the intrigue, it wasn't bad but it also wasn't particularly good. Plus, so many plot holes and inconsistencies made the film very slow going at the end. The finale seemed to drag and much of it just didn't make sense.Still, this is a decent wartime film--not great, but a decent enough time passer.

"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.