Review – Five Graves to Cairo

Unlike director Billy Wilder’s other World War Two drama, this one was actually made during the war. Indeed, fighting in North Africa was still going on while these filmmakers were busy adapting an old stage play to the new conflict. A British soldier (Franchot Tone) is stranded behind enemy lines and disguises himself as a busboy at a small hotel in Bufu Egypt. He soon finds himself working closely with Wehrmacht occupation forces who mistake him for a German spy. Erich von Stroheim does a classic turn as Erwin Rommel, playing the famous field marshal as a Prussian tightass (quite a contrast to the gentler treatment he received after the war). The story is silly in spots – most notably the resolution of the “five graves” mystery toward the end – but for the most part this is a reasonably good piece of propaganda. Mildly amusing