User Reviews

The films of writer, producer director Billy Wilder are regarded as some of the finest works of cinematic art in the history of motion pictures. Wilder, who with a handful of film pioneers such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, John Houston and Henry Hathaway et al forged and created a unique style in the production of films that today are looked upon as enduring, inspired and unsurpassed classics. In the case of Wilder such dramatic and sublime fare as "Double Indemnity" (1944), "Ace In the Hole" (1951) and Hollywood's greatest film about itself "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). Plus his comedies like "The Apartment" (1960) and "Some Like It Hot" (1959) - regarded by many to be the funniest film ever made - can never, let's face it, be equalled. There is a timelessness and ageless quality about them that reaches out to anyone who watches them regardless of their generation. Contemporory film maker Cameron Crowe observed "Wilder's work is a treasure trove of flesh and blood individuals, all wonderfully alive".

It is hard to believe that one of Wilder's earliest Hollywood efforts FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO was made in 1943. It seems to be a much later film in look, approach and concept. Yet this quite intriguing spy drama was the result of the day's headlines being utilized by Wilder for the movie's scenario. Based on Lajos Biro's play "Hotel Imperial" it was superbly written by Charles Brackett and Wilder and sharply photographed in monochrome by John Seitz. It was produced by Brackett for Paramount Pictures and was masterfully directed by Wilder.

Franchot Tone is British tank Corporal John Bramble who stumbles into a Sahara oasis hotel after crawling through the desert during the North African campaign in 1942. The Germans also arrive at virtually the same time headed by none other than the infamous German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (Erich Von Stroheim). Rommel and his command take up residence in the hotel run by nervous local Arab Farid (Akim Tamiroff) and an attractive Alsatian maid Mouche (Anne Baxter). To conceal his identity Bramble pretends to be the hotel waiter and as such tries to find out from the formidable quest exactly where on the map the German arms dumps are located. With help from Farid and the maid and gaining Rommel's confidence he eventually acquires the information but not before Mouche sacrifices herself so that Bramble can leave and get back to the British lines.

Performances are uniformly excellent! Tone gives an engaging portrayal of a reluctant spy. Anne Baxter has rarely been better than here in the role of the ill-fated Mouche and the amusing Akim Tamiroff as the ever fearful and stammering Farid is as appealing as ever. But the picture belongs to Von Stroheim! His striking performance just steals the show. Although the actor didn't resemble Rommel in the slightest his embodiment of the character is exactly what you would imagine the great German battlefield strategist should have, perhaps, looked like. Rommel himself died in 1944. It is interesting to ponder if he ever saw the picture and what his thoughts on Von Stroheim's flamboyant portrayal of himself might have been.

Complimenting the picture throughout is the terrific score by Miklos Rozsa. Rozsa was one of Wilder's favourite composers and wrote the music for some of the director's best films like "Double Indemnity" (1944), "Lost Weekend" (1945) and "The Private Lives Of Sherlock Holmes" (1970). For FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO he wrote a spirited and heroic march to point up the British forces movements and a reflective and ravishing character theme for the maid Mouche which is given lovely renditions on solo violin.

FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO is a superb and suspenseful spy thriller set in an atmospheric war background. And thanks to the great Billy Wilder it's a great movie that simply refuses to age in its appeal.

Classic moment from FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO:

Rommel, sitting up in bed as Mouche (Anne Baxter) enters with his breakfast, "I don't like women in the morning" he declares and when she pours his coffee and with a gesture of the back of his hand he instructs her to "take two steps back please".

In 1941, in the middle of a long list of bad news items from North Africa, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did something very unusual for wartime. In addressing the House of Commons , Churchill admitted that the British were facing an enemy led by a brilliant general. It was the first time in modern history that an enemy leader gave a wave of approval (in it's way) to an enemy commander. That leader was, of course, Erwin Rommel, the Nazi German commander of the fabled Afrika Corps.

Churchill's note of admiration was one more element in the creation of the legend of "the Desert Fox" who defeated one British Army after another, until defeated finally at El Alamein by a plan created by General Auchenleck, but carried out by his replacement General Bernard Montgomery. Actually El Alamein simply stopped Rommel's drive to the Suez Canal - he and his men remained a viable opponent to the Allies in North Africa for another year, even winning a humiliating defeat of American forces at Kasserine Pass in 1943. Then Hitler ordered Rommel back to Europe, and his replacement, lacking Rommel's genius, was finally defeated. Rommel, sent to stiffen the "Western Wall" in France from invasion, eventually got involved in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, and would be forced to commit suicide or find his family endangered by a vengeful Fuhrer. By the actions of 1944 Rommel, the best known German military genius the Second World War produced, gained a posthumous place as an eleventh hour member of the Allies.

Rommel would, of course, be the first Axis figure to be honored by a film biography from Hollywood - THE DESERT FOX starring James Mason. But in 1943 he represent Prussian militarism. So, when Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett made FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, they did not water down the nastiness of Rommel. Eric Von Stroheim, former silent film director, and now widely respected character actor, was chosen to play Rommel, and the character fit the brutal caricature (with some light touches fortunately) that Von Stroheim had developed a quarter century earlier when he played German soldiers in World War I films, or when he played the commandant of the prison camp, in Jean Renoir's LE GRAND ILLUSION.

The plot begins when a British tank appears that has just been in battle with the Germans. It's crew is dead, but for one man - Franchot Tone. Tone manages to stumble into a desert hotel that is run by Akim Tamiroff, where there are two members of the staff. One is Anne Baxter, a French girl, and the other is a male servant who is not around. Subsequently Tone finds that the male servant has been killed in a bombing of one of the hotel's supply buildings. He assumes the identity of the dead man. Tamiroff is doubtful about this act of duplicity, but remains silent out of a sense of pity for Tone's safety. Baxter is more openly hostile - she has lost family to Allied bombings in France, and has been reduced to working in this backwater. But she keeps a watchful quiet on the scene - leaving Tone wondering if she will betray her or not. As she soon is taking up with German Lieutenant Peter Van Eyck Tone's his concerns for her increase.

He realizes as the number of German troops coming grows that there is something big here. Soon he learns that Rommel is coming to the hotel for a brief rest before resuming his stunning sweep across North Africa. We see Rommel arrive, but do not hear anything until later - when we see Rommel dictating a letter to High Command in Germany. He is standing like a colossus with his back to us, playing with a swagger stick. He ends the letter comparing the speed of his advance through the desert with the forty years in the desert of Moses.

When Von Stroheim learns that Tone is in the hotel, he starts talking somewhat archly to him. Tone realizes that the servant was actually a gifted German spy. He keeps up the pretense to see what Von Stroheim might tell him. It's all centers on what the German calls, "the Five Graves to Cairo", and Tone tries to figure out what it all means.

I won't go into the rest of the story, but Wilder does very nicely with it. His Rommel is not the future ally that Mason created in the 1950s, but the cold, ruthless, brilliant enemy. He is a little arrogant , giving a military lecture to captured British officers (led by Miles Mander), but also capable of regretting the loss of promising German officers.

Wilder stressed that not all of the enemy were bad. Fortunio Bonanova plays an Italian general who is a liaison to Rommel's army - and is extremely friendly and likable. Actually he is totally ignored and despised by the Germans, who had sent the Afrika Corps to North Africa in 1941 after Italy was smashed by General Archibald Wavell's men in Libya. Bonanova's appearance and personality resemble the then famous Italian Fascist Minister of Aviation, General Italo Balbo, who had wanted Italy to remain friendly to the Allies or neutral (as opposed to the views of Mussolini).

For a film meant to beef up America's war effort and will to fight, even while looking somewhat awe-struck at a remarkable enemy figure, FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO is a surprisingly sturdy film sixty three years later. I recommend catching it when it appears on television.

In Poe's short story, "The Purloined Letter," an incriminating epistle is stolen and hidden in a hotel room. The police can't find it, although they probe all the possible places where it might be secreted -- peeling off the wall paper and whatnot. Poe's detective discovers the epistle lying in plan sight, where no one would think of looking. Rommel pulls a similar stunt with an ordinary map of Egypt indicating points where his supplies are secretly buried.

You wouldn't know Billy Wilder had directed this, if you didn't already know it. He was still searching for that stable cynical stance he was to find in his later work. That doesn't stop him from being a top-notch director. Note the opening scene of a British tank traveling over the dunes with a dead crew. It didn't stop him from being a good writer either. An English soldier mentions that he once bought a bowler in London three weeks before the war began -- "A singularly imprudent investment." That's the kind of line that the patrician Brackett would have written and the co-writer Wilder applauded avidly. Wilder's English wasn't so hot. He depended a lot on his co-authors.

That doesn't detract from our enjoyment of this simple, patriotic movie about Franchot Tone as the British soldier forced by circumstances to pose as a lame waiter in a hotel called The British Empress in Egypt. The British troops are forced out by Erwin Rommel (Erich von Stroheim) and Germans and Italians occupy the hotel. The hotel itself is run by the shivering Akim Tamiroff, Hollywood's utility foreigner. The chambermaid is Anne Baxter, doing fairly well with her French uvular R's.

The Italian General Sebastiano is played by Fortunio Bonanova, who loves to sing opera -- "but not Wagner." Bonanova's character is played for laughs and mocked by von Stroheim and the other German officers. He's assigned the room with the bathroom that doesn't work, for instance. The real Rommel ridiculed his Italian colleagues too. Rommel wasn't a man known for his sense of humor but he was known to refer to Marshall Ettore Bastico as Marshall Bombastico.

Anyway, the production rolls along in its playfully suspenseful way. Tamiroff is scared to death after he allows the fugitive Tone to play the hotel's waiter. Baxter is bitter towards the British and strikes up a liaison, so to speak, with the German Lieutenant Peter Van Eyck, in an attempt to get her brother out of a prison in France.

Baxter, known as "Mouche", is a tough cookie, though Baxter in her youth is chubby, petite, and cute. She's from Marseille. "Ah, Marseille," sneers Franchot Tone. "That's where they make that soup full of fish -- that bouillabaisse -- I always expect to find an old galosh in the bottom of the bowl." Alas, the spirited gamin Mouche is swatted at the end but not until she's found her Emersonian over-soul.

In fact, the dialog, by Wilder and Leigh Brackett is pretty witty. There is a great speech in German (with an American accent) given to von Stroheim, and translated by him into English, about how the Red Sea was once parted by a special arrangement with Moses, but no such event will interfere with Rommel's triumphal entry into Cairo. Moses, of course, was a Hebrew. And when the Nazi general pronounces the name he gives it a long, drawn-out, and hilariously vicious umlaut -- Moooozes.

Franchot Tone's acting is nothing to write home about but who cares? It's an interesting story, full of suspense, intrigue, and comic moments. You'll probably get a kick out of it.

You need to remember that for a certain period almost every film out of Hollywood was either about the war or about something that took place with the war as a backdrop. In that context, this film -- directed by Billy Wilder, who would become a legend in later years -- is one of the best of the genre. It is not merely about the war in North Africa, it is not merely about what it is like having to fight against the Nazi machine, it is not merely about being a spy for the "good guys", there is a secondary plot arc about maps and secret caches of materiel which I prefer not to give away. Of the many films of this type done in this period, one of best. Entertaining, and a little piece of history, to boot.

It's remarkable how interesting a war time espionage film can be, while at the same time requiring major suspension of disbelief throughout the story for various reasons. The major one here for me related to the character of actor Franchot Tone impersonating a German undercover spy. Throughout the entire film, not one German officer or soldier thought it appropriate to address him in the mother tongue. There were plenty of opportunities, as German was used sporadically in the story at various times. At least in the interest of being cautious with captured British officers around, one would think Field Marshal Rommel (Erich von Stroheim) or Lieutenant Schwengler (Peter van Eyck) might have addressed Bramble/Davos in German, especially in the early going when all the characters at the Hotel Empress would have come under suspicion.

Which brings me to my next point. You probably wouldn't need to know a thing about General Rommel to question why he would speak freely of German military strategy in the presence of English officers. I don't think so. As for the casting of Erich von Stroheim as Rommel, there was no physical resemblance to speak of. My idea for the role would have been someone like Conrad Veidt who portrayed Major Strasser in the Bogart film "Casablanca". Although with the timing of this picture, shooting schedules might have overlapped between the two.

One more thing before I'm through. I thought the gimmick with the map and the letters spelling out 'EGYPT' was a fairly clever plot element, but there again, a bit of thought brings a big question mark. Given that any of the letters on the map might have represented an area covering hundreds of square miles, the resolution for the Allies wouldn't have been as precise as the story suggests. Even given a general area in which to unearth the hidden military supplies, a fair amount of time would have been needed to discover a weapons cache.

Still, even with all the perceived glitches in the story, I fond the story intriguing enough to hold my attention. All the principals did a good job, and I particularly liked the character of Farid (Akim Tamiroff), who was downright hilarious at times under stressful circumstances. I was also moved by Bramble's response to the Alsatian maid Mouche (Anne Baxter), who had an overbearing concern for her younger brother who was a prisoner of the Nazis. It appeared Bramble made his point when he stated - "It's not one brother that matters. It's a million brothers".

This WWII movie is an unexpected delight, although coming from Billy Wilder the unexpected should be expected. The action in Five Graves to Cairo takes place in a flea-bitten, mud- brick hotel on the edge of the North African desert. It's 1942 and Tobruk has fallen. Rommel and the Afrika Corps are driving toward Cairo and the only thing that can stop them is a lack of supplies. The English are worried. The Egyptians are testing the wind. And Rommel seems to be supremely confident. "We shall take that big cigar from Churchill's mouth and make him say 'Heil'!" he says with a smirk. He has reason to be confident. "It's not the supplies which reach us," he says. "It's us who reach the supplies...thousands and thousands of gallons of petrol..." and water, ammunition and food. The only things that can stop him is a British tank corporal, John Bramble (Franchot Tone), the fearful Egyptian owner of the hotel, Farid (Akim Tamiroff), and the angry, resentful hotel maid, Mouche (Anne Baxter).

Bramble stumbled into the hotel after a tank battle that left the rest of his crew dead. Farid took him in reluctantly. Hours later Rommel and his army roared up and took over the hotel. Bramble had to disguise himself as Davos, the club-footed waiter who had been killed in an air-raid and whose body lies buried in the hotel's basement. Rommel (Erich von Stroheim) arrives, imperious and dynamic, and suddenly greets Davos by name. It seems Davos had been a German agent. John Bramble now has to play a very careful game for his life...especially when Rommel brags about the work of a German archaeologist, Professor Cronstettler, who in the late Thirties supervised a number of digs...five to be exact...along the North African coast between Tobruk and Alexandria. Rommel shows Davos his map of Egypt. Could it be, Bramble suddenly realizes, that where the five letters...E, G, Y, P, T...are placed might also be the locations of...? Bramble must escape to Cairo. His information could prove the tipping point in Montgomery's plan to defeat Rommel. And Rommel, believing Davos is a German agent, decides to send Davos to Cairo to prepare the way for Rommel's triumphant entrance to the city. He wants no bombs thrown at him hidden in bouquets, he says. He'll require a Luke-warm bath in the imperial suite. Oh, yes, and a command performance of Aida "in German...omitting the second act, which is too long and not too good." And then an ambitious German lieutenant discovers the real Davos' body in the basement. Now, Bramble must leave before he is discovered. Farid must think of some plausible excuses. And Mouche must deliberately become a distraction.

What is Mouche's role? Is there a romance? Not exactly. When the German's arrive she wants to turn Bramble in. Just give me five seconds before you do, he asks her, "five seconds before you call the Germans. Just five seconds." "What do you want to tell me about," she asks cynically, "blood, sweat and tears?" Instead, he scribbles something on a piece of paper and hands it to her. "This is the address of my wife in London," he says. He wishes he had something to give his wife and his son. Mouche looks closely at him, then does not turn him in. Mouche, however, has a younger brother in a German concentration camp. She's prepared to do almost anything to save him. When it turns out to be too late, she proves to be braver than almost anyone else.

Five Graves to Cairo is a literate, amusing and exciting war adventure. It works in part because of the clever script by Wilder and his partner, Charles Brackett. It also works because of the performances of Franchot Tone and Erich von Stroheim. Tone was a fine actor, undone by time and a messy personal life. He might not have been anyone's first choice as an action hero, but in this movie we need a hero who is as clever as he is brave, who is believable in being able to out-fox Rommel and resourceful enough to get away with it. That he and Anne Baxter as Mouche do not fall into each others arms only adds to the sophistication of the film. von Stroheim dominates every scene he's in, except when he comes up against Tone's underplaying. As Rommel, von Stroheim sports a shaved head, a horse-hair fly whisk and an ostentatious German officer's hat. He's charming and he's imperious; he's calculating and he's cynical. When Mouche pleads with him to intercede for her brother, he simply stares at her and says, "This is a familiar scene, reminiscent of bad melodrama."

Billy Wilder delivers an unconventional war movie which remains entertaining and moving.