The Spider and the Fly

The Spider and the Fly (1949)

A New British Thriller of Crime, Detection and Suspense!

"The Spider and the Fly is set in Paris during the cloud-cuckoo days before WW I. The storyline intertwines the destinies of three people. Guy Rolfe plays Phillipe de Ledocq, a resourceful safecracker who always manages to elude arrest. Eric Portman is cast as police-chief Maubert, who will not rest until Ledocq is behind bars. And Nadia Gray is Madeleine, the woman beloved by both Ledocq and Maubert. Just as Maubert has managed to capture his man, Ledocq is released at the behest of the government, who wants him to steal secrets from the German embassy revealing the whereabouts of the Kaiser's secret agents. And just how does Madeleine figure into all of this? Spider and the Fly is a diverting precursor to the 1960s TV series It Takes a Thief." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Date of release
1949-12-01
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 34m
Genres
Crime, Thriller
Director
Robert Hamer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

The Spider and the Fly is a 1949 British crime film directed by Robert Hamer and starring Eric Portman, Guy Rolfe and Nadia Gray. The screenplay concerns an unusual love triangle that develops between two criminals and a policeman on the eve of the First World War. It was written by Robert Westerby. Hamer made it immediately after Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).

Production

It was the first film from the producing team of Maxwell Setton and Aubrey Baring, who set up their operation at Mayflower Productions. Mayflower had been established by Charles Laughton and Eric Pommer in the 1930s and made three films but became dormant with the advent of World War Two.

Robert Westerby's story was based on a true story which he had been told by a member of the French police.

In October 1948 Alfred Hitchcock announced that he would make three films for Transatlantic Pictures after he finished Under Capricorn: I Confess, Dark Duty and The Spider and the Fly.

The leads were Eric Portman, Nadia Gray and Guy Rolfe. It was Eric Portman's first film in over a year, during which time he enjoyed a great success on stage in a double bill of Terence Rattigan plays called Playbill. Nadia Gray was a Romanian actor who had spent part of the war in a German concentration camp; she was cast in the film partly due to her appearance on the Paris stage in a production of Noël Coward's Present Laughter (she was seen b…

Filming started in May 1949 and took place in Paris over three weeks, then at Pinewood Studios in London. Sets were by the art director Edward Carrick. The period costumes were designed partly by Elizabeth Haffenden. It was Seth Holt's first film as lead editor, although he had worked as an assistant for a number of years.

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