WARNING: SPOILERS

We finally get to see Victor Laszlo in Lisbon!

OK, so not quite. Paul Henreid isn’t playing a Czech freedom fighter here but a Dutch one, Vincent Van Der Lyn, and he doesn’t have a deep past with a Swedish beauty but a new romance with an Austro-Hungarian one (Hedy Lamarr, yowsah).

Either way, you understand what Warner Bros. is trying to do: So whatever worked with “Casablanca,” um, can we repeat that?

No, you can’t.

Play it again and again and again and again, Sam
Van Der Lyn is a one-time teacher in the Netherlands whose student wrote the words “Long Live Liberty” (or its Dutch equivalent) on the chalkboard, and for that he was killed by the Nazis. Van Der Lyn was then imprisoned but escaped, and he became such a famous saboteur he was given a nickname: The Flying Dutchman. Now he’s arriving in Lisbon so he can travel to Britain to fight the Nazis head on. Though … why? Isn’t he more valuable where he is? I mean, aren’t the Allies trying to drop spies and saboteurs into Europe to do exactly what he’s doing? So why is he going the other way?

Hold onto that thought.

We get the “Casablanca” echoes right away. In Lisbon, there’s a police captain named Pereira (Joseph Calleia, looking very much like a young Cesar Romero), and you don’t know which side he’s on, but he winds up being on the right side. He’s basically Capt. Renault without the rascally charm.

At a restaurant and casino, Van Der Lyn meets a beautiful woman with a past. She’s married to a German, Hugo Von Mohr (Victor Francen), who rescued her from Dachau. And no matter how she feels about Vincent, she just can’t leave Hugo. She's Ilsa without the sense of deep love.

Van Der Lyn is Rick without the cool. In the 36 hours he’s in Lisbon, a neutral city, where he’s supposed to meet a replacement named Jennings—there are passwords about pawn shops—he mostly just wants a good meal and maybe a romance. He’s about to get the former at a nightclub when the latter, Irene, sits at his table. She’s running from the law after her underground contact in a back alley is shot by the police. He flirts, she doesn’t, then she says she has to make a phone call and sneaks out the backdoor.

He pursues—to Casino Estoril—but, in the pursuit, seems more annoying than charming. The next day it’s worse: He finds out where she lives and basically kidnaps her. Inexplicably she warms to him. They even kiss. But then he discovers the hubby backstory.

Meanwhile he meets Lisbon’s underground leader Ricardo Quintanilla (Sydney Greenstreet), who introduces him to an international assortment of resistance fighters: Polish (Peter Lorre), Norwegian (Gregory Gaye) and French (Louis Mercier). Which is when Quintanilla warns Van Der Lyn—privately—about a traitor in their midst. Talk about your tossed-in plot points! If I’m Van Der Lyn, I go, “Wait, why did you introduce me to everyboy? Aren't you putting me at risk? Shouldn’t you be cleaning house first? Also—and no offense—aren’t you a little pale for a Ricardo?”

Eventually Van Der Lyn meets Jennings … lying dead in Van Der Lyn’s room. A second later the cops shows up and Van Der Lyn goes to prison. He immediately assumes Irene traduced him, based on no evidence, and berates her when she shows up. After he escapes and returns to the gang, he find Quintanilla now suspects him. “Wait, didn’t you think there was a traitor in your midst before I arrived? So how could it be me?” is what he doesn't say. Instead he relays Jennings’ dying words, something about an eagle, and for whatever reason that allays Quintanilla’s suspicions.

Then the two set a trap for the traitor: a last-minute (but fake) meeting with Jennings’ replacement. Now let’s see who contacts the Germans with the intel. Will it be:

• The dull Frenchman
• The dull Norwegian
• Peter Lorre
• Hedy Lamarr
• Hugo, Irene’s German husband, whom we’ve just learned is actually with the resistance

Ready? The person secretly working with the Germans is … the German.

We get a shootout, Pereira proves himself a righteous dude, a Capt. Renault, and Van Der Lyn decides to become his own replacement. That’s right, he’s returning to occupied Europe. The whole trip—the whole movie—was a mistake. Except for the love! On the beach, as Portuguese fishermen get ready to row him back to France, he says his heartfelt goodbyes to Irene. Why doesn’t she go with him? I guess because they needed a goodbye like the goodbye in “Casablanca.” Except Lamarr isn't Bergman and Henreid isn't Bogie. There’s no fog, no passion, no poignancy. No looking at you, kid.

Geography 101
“The Conspirators” is directed well enough by Jean Negulesco—a Romanian artist who would go on to greater success in the technicolor 1950s with “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “Three Coins in a Fountain”—and it helps that his cinematographer is Arthur Edeson, who’d been filming since 1914 and was DP on “Casablanca,” “The Maltese Falcon,” and “Frankenstein,” among others. The problem is the script, which is derivative, all over the place, and not clever. The pawn shop line is the best line.

This is one of the first Hedy Lamarr movies I’ve seen, and she’s a knockout, but I don’t know what kind of actress she is. The love scenes went nowhere. She seems more distracted than anything. She’s much better at casting a dismissive eye at the clumsy advances of men. I’m sure she had practice.

Final thought: How many WWII-era movies begin with a map like this one does? War, what is it good for? Geography lessons.