Other Titles • Five Graves to Cairo • Fünf Gräber bis Kairo (1970)
Synopses for Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
1.
Billy Wilder's only war film, an adaptation of the work of Hungarian playwright Lajos Biro, stars Franchot Tone as British tank officer John J. Bramble. The only surviving member of a tank crew in North Africa during WWII, part of the Eighth Army, which has been routed by Rommel's celebrated Afrika Korps, he reaches the Empress of Britain Hotel in a small desert town delusional from heat exposure. Hotel owner Farid (Akim Tamiroff) hides him from the arriving Nazi troops, who accompany Rommel to his hotel. When he comes around, Farid disguises John as one of his waiters, now dead, who had been a Nazi spy. John hopes, in the manner to kill the German general, but is dissuaded from doing so by a captured British officer, and instead learns the secret of the Afrika Korps success. During the 1930s, the Germans had hidden supplies, especially tank fuel, all across Egypt, in the event that war erupted. The five supply dumps are called 'graves' by the Germans, and it becomes John's mission to locate them so that they can be destroyed. An excellent, suspenseful wartime melodrama, leavened with the typical Wilder wit, as a bonus. Tone leads a superb supporting cast which also includes Peter Van Eyck and Miles Mander.
(15 votes)
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