Title: Five Graves to Cairo Year: 1943 Genre: War, Drama Country: USA Language: English, German Director: Billy Wilder Screenwriters: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett based on the play by Lajos Biró Music: Miklós Rózsa Cinematography: John F. Seitz Editing: Doane Harrison Cast: Franchot Tone Anne Baxter Erich von Stroheim Akim Tamiroff Peter van Eyck Fortunio Bonanova Ian Keith Miles Mander Rating: 6.5/10
Made in Hollywood when WWII rages on, Billy Wilder’s FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, whose plot involves an assassination plan of Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (von Stroheim), aka. “the Desert Fox” by a British corporal John Bramble (Tone), was released only several months after Rommel’s defeat in the Northern Africa battle front, and nails its color to the mast of patriotic propaganda. After the opening sequences of a lone tank wandering in the scorching desert, John is the sole survivor of his British tank crew, afflicted by sunstroke, he alights on “the Empress of Britain” hotel, where advancing German troop, headed by Rommel, are garrisoned, on their way to conquer Cairo. Assuming the identity of the hotel’s waiter Davos, who was killed during the bombing the day before, John is surprised to find out Davos is actually as German spy. Taking the advantage of staying in vicinity of Rommel, John harbors a plan to kill him, but is thwarted by the hotel’s French chambermaid Mouche (Baxter), who has a personal plea to make in front of Rommel. Soon with precious intel (hence the film’s title) to be acquired, John abandons his original plan, blows the lid off the meaning of “five graves”, and is to be sent to Cairo out of harm’s way. However, to save his own skin, when his false identity is discovered by Lieutenant Schwegler (von Eyck), John kills him, and guess who shall hold accountable for it? The main idea is one should relinquish personal attachment and fight or even sacrifice for the greater good. Mouche wants to save her concentration camp-interned brother, that is one life, while John has millions’ lives to save if he can get the intel out safely, you do the math, and that’s the gung-ho spirit! Tone, as the hero, leaves much to be desired, he seems more well-disposed to flirt with a stern Baxter than to carry out his mission, and Baxter, barely 20 then, contends to be sharp-tongued and worldly, putting on a stolid face versus a whisk-brandishing von Stroheim, who impersonates a grandiloquent Rommel much to his own vainglorious ego. Vaunt his strategy in front of several captive British generals, his Rommel is larger than life, but as a character, he is the most watchable, and Fortunio Bonanova get a chance to belt out incessantly for a one-note, depreciating but wholly amusing send-up of a fish-out-of-the-water Italian general. Nominated for 3 Oscars in the technical departments, FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO essentially can be appreciated for its sharp chiaroscuro design which soon would be the new norm during the film-noir deluge. “There is no ‘y’ in Egypt!”, is the crucial but ridiculous wordplay in its paint-by-number plot, also there is neither “grave” nor “Cairo” in this Wilder’s minor work, a poor man’s CASABLANCA sounds fairly apposite. referential entries: Wilder’s THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942, 7.2/10); Michael Curtiz’s CASABLANCA (1942, 8.9/10).
Cinema Omnivore 