This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Producer: Charles Brackett. Copyright 3 May 1943 by Paramount Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Paramount: 26 May 1943. U.S. release: 4 May 1943. Australian release: 30 September 1943. Sydney opening at the Prince Edward (Paramount's number one Australian showcase): 24 September 1943 (ran 4 weeks). 8,728 feet. 97 minutes. SYNOPSIS: British army corporal poses as a waiter at Rommel's headquarters.NOTES: A re-make of Hotel Imperial (1926) directed by Mauritz Stiller from a script by Jules Furthman, starring James Hall, Pola Negri and George Siegmann in the Tone, Baxter and Von Stroheim roles, respectively.COMMENT: From the very moment that Erich Von Stroheim strides on to the screen, we know we're in for a real treat in Five Graves to Cairo. Fortunately, this occurs quite early in the action. Just enough preparatory work is laid down by the screenwriters to whet our appetite. Von Stroheim enters at exactly the right moment and he stays with us until the action really comes to an end. True, there is an ironic little epilogue which neatly (if sadly) ties up a major plot strand, but otherwise this is Von Stroheim's movie, and he makes the most of it. The other players, particularly Peter Van Eyck, Franchot Tone and Anne Baxter lend excellent support. Von Stroheim's interpretation is, of course, miles removed from James Mason's in The Desert Fox (1951). Mason's Rommel comes over as a softie compared to the Von's far more powerful characterization. Fortunio Bonanova's self-admiring general griping about the way the Germans treat their Italian allies is a typical Billy Wilder creation, adding just the right touch of comic inanity to an fascinating and tautly suspenseful plot. Unfortunately, to my mind, Akim Tamiroff tends to overplay the cowardly proprietor of this Hotel Imperial, thus dissipating some of the atmosphere so carefully built up by Wilder's dramatically delineated compositions and Seitz's superbly lit cinematography. Nonetheless, extremely high production values, including a Rozsa score, effective locations, eye-catching sets, the intriguing title and clever plot, plus Eric Von Stroheim's gripping scene-hugging (though it must be admitted Tone stands up to him well enough) and Anne Baxter's surprisingly effective and most credible performance, more than compensate for any of the blubbering Tamiroff shortcomings.

Five Graves to Cairo is a totally unlikely story that makes for a great World War II drama. In this movie, during the desert campaign of 1942, the axis powers are prevailing by outlasting the British forces. As the movie opens, we see British tanks moving across the desert with dying or dead men aboard. One British soldier, John Bramble (Franchot Tone), falls from his tank and drags himself to safely at the isolated Hotel Imperial which had recently been bombed by the Germans. Only two people at the hotel had survived the bombing: the Egyptian owner, Farid (Akim Tamiroff), and one of the hotel maids, a French woman named Mouche (Anne Baxter). When Bramble drags himself into the hotel, the two immediately treat him for sunstroke. But, no sooner had they treated him when a group of Germans and one Italian, General Sebastiano (Fortunio Bonanova), under Field Marshal Rommel (Erich von Stroheim), attack and take over the hotel. Bramble disguises himself as a British servant with a clubbed foot, (one Paul Davos), who had actually just died during the German attack. (The real Davos was British but was working as a spy for the Germans before he was killed.) With Farid and Mouche in on it, Bramble's disguise (as Davos) enables him to pretend to work with Rommel and get valuable information while, at the same time, being protected by Rommel. Perhaps the greatest irony of the story occurs when a group of British soldiers are taken as German POWs and housed in the same hotel with the other "residents." One of the captured British "residents," a Col. Fitzhume (Miles Mander), looks, acts, and is treated (by Tone) as if he were Field Marshal Montgomery. Any similarity between the character and the real Monty seems less than a pure consequence. Imagine Rommel entertaining Monty in Egypt and giving away his North African battle strategy and you will see some of the humour of this Billy Wilder's movie.

Billy Wilder, as many European film artists and technicians, also contributed his share of propaganda during the Second World War, with this film adaptation of Hungarian writer Lajos Biró's play, "Drama in Four Acts", previously filmed twice as "Hotel Imperial" at Paramount. It narrates a story of love and political intrigue involving Austrians and Russians during First World War. Given green light by Paramount to make a new film, Wilder and writer Charles Brackett discovered the property and, based on recent war events in North Africa during Second World War, decided to cash in the drama headlines of the times. I read that Biró's play had comic touches, but I really do not know who contributed the antics merged with the drama in this version, if they were the playwright's ideas, or if they were added by Brackett and (especially) Wilder, who even wanted Cary Grant to play the lead. The result of this spy story about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the sabotage of his "Five Graves" operation, is plagued with stereotypes, caricatures and comic relief, all of which are so out of place that they become the real saboteurs of "Five Graves to Cairo". Erich von Stroheim plays his trite version of a ruthless European officer, while Anne Baxter unconvincingly tries to pass as a French girl, Akim Tamiroff overacts as he frequently did (this time as a Egyptian, but he used the same tics to play a Chinese general, a Spanish Republican, a Mexican mafioso, a Turkish cook or an Italian monsignor), and Fortunio Bonanova is a bad joke as a ridiculous Fascist general who loves to sing arias. The best performances are given by Franchot Tone and Peter van Eyck, who respectively play a British corporal and a German lieutenant, both under control. Tone is convincing and moving, especially in his last scene in a graveyard; and Eyck is good as an officer exchanging favors for sex. Wilder as usual keeps you interested, but for spy thrillers, sex melodramas or action war dramas, it is better to watch "Casablanca" (1942) or James Mason as Rommel in "The Desert Fox" (1951), which are much better, and were more honest about their business.

**SPOILERS** Made during the hight of WWII the film "Five Graves to Cairo" did its best in trying to explain the reasons why German Field Marshall Ewin Rommel's, Erich Von Stroheim, Africka Corps was so successful in battling the numerically superior,in men and equipment, British forces in the North African Campaigen. This was found out by British corporal John Bramble, Franchot Tone, who after escaping from Rommel's troops in the Libyan desert ended up at this watering hole on the Egyptian Libyan frontier Sidi Halkaya where Rommel's Africka Corps took a breather in its drive into Egypt!Taking on the identity of Paul Davos, who was killed in a German air raid, a waiter at what looked like the only building in town "The Princess of Britian" hotel Bramble soon found out from Rommel's aide de camp Lt.Schwegler, Peter Van Eyk, that Davos,or the person he was masquerading around as, was in fact a German spy who kept him informed, through the hotel laundry room, on British 8th Army troop movements in North Africa. What Bramble was now determined to find out was Romell's future plans and somehow get them back to British 8th Army headquarters in Cairo before Rommel makes his next move!While all this is going on the owner of the hotel the Egyptian Farid's, Akim Tamiroff, French maid Mouche, Anne Baxter, has other ideas in dealing with the German occupiers! Mouche wants to get her brother who's being held prisoner in a German POW camp freed even if she has to get in good with the Germans in charge, Lt. Schwegler & Field MarshellRommel,to do it! This makes things very difficult for Bramble in that Mouche feels that his country, Great Britain, was responsible for her brother being in German hands by him as well as 50,000 other French troops being left twisting in the wind on the beaches of Dunkirk back in 1940! That while the fleeing British Troops checked out of France to avoid capture and annihilation by the German Army!Romell in trying to impress a number of captured British officers in how smart he is almost lets the cat out of the bag in how he plans to capture Cairo as well a the rest of Egypt in bragging that his supply lines are out of reach of the British RAF and Royle Navy's air and naval bombardments. This has Bramble, who was listening in on Romell's conversation, trying to figure out if Rommel's supply lines are in advance or ahead of his troops instead of behind them! But where they are was something that was way over Bramble's head! Even though it was right in front of his, and the British officers, eyes if they ever bother to logically and analytically check out the map that Romell was showing them!Pretty good war movie despite the very obvious allied propaganda in it. The film did make a point of Rommel's total disdain of his Italian allies in the person of the buffoonish Italian General Seastiano, Fortunio Bonanova, whom Romell had no use for,in his annoying singing, at all. We also got to see the conflict between the British and French in the French,through Mouche, feeling that they were used by Churhill as cannon fodder in the war by having them, especially at Dunkirk, do all the heavy lifting. ***SPOILERS*** It was later that Mouche got a change of heart when she found out through Field Marshell Rommel himself that she was being strung along by her German boyfriend Lt. Schwegler in him trying to save her brother which he had no intention of doing. These actions by Schwegler were only to get the chance of getting Mouche, in appreciating his noble and unselfish efforts, in the sack with him! P.S The film makers seemed to have waited until the war in North Africa was officially over in early May 1943 to release "Five Graves to Cairo" even though it was in the can, finished, months earlier. That's very probably because they didn't want any more surprises from Field Marshall Rommel, the real one not the actor who played him in the movie, in him pulling a rabbit out of his hat in turning the tide of the war in North Africa in Germany's favor! Like he did so many other times before when it looked like he and his Africa Corps had just about had it!