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Just what I expected

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Five Graves to Cairo is directed by Billy Wilder who also co-adapts the screenplay with Charles Brackett. It's based on the Lajos Biró play Hotel Imperial. It stars Franchot tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Erich von Stroheim and Peter Van Eyck. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by John Seitz.Tone plays John Bramble, the sole survivor of a British tank division who stumbles into a near deserted desert town only to find it suddenly fill up with Field Marshall Rommel and his troops. Assuming the identity of a dead waiter at the hotel run by Farid (Tamiroff), Bramble gains the trust of everyone only to learn that the waiter he is pretending to be was actually a secret agent for the Germans. If he can keep up the pretence and not get found out, Bramble could have great impact on the North Africa Campaign.A cracker is this, an early Billy Wilder film that thrives on tension and clever plotting while pulsing with great literate strength. Cast are more than capable of making the material work as well, with Tone nicely restrained, Baxter very touching (decent French accent too) and Von Stroheim a ball of emotions as a complex laden Rommel. Tech credits are grade A stuff, the sound department and Seitz's photography especially lifting the picture still further to classic status. This is no high energy war movie, it's character driven but all the better for it, with Wilder even slotting in moments of humour to sit alongside the sharper edges of the dialogue. From the sombre opening of a tank aimlessly trudging across the desert, its pilot hanging dead from the turret, to a very touching finale involving a parasol, Wilder's movie holds the attention greatly. A masterful story brought to us by a master director. 8/10

I watched this film after reading several positive reviews of it. My expectations were raised, but watching it was a big disappointment. As an average little suspense story, it is OK, not particularly thrilling and with a rather simple storyline.Why do some people praise Franchot Tone for his acting? Balderdash! This "Englishman" doesn't even have an English accent. But apart from that, he only manages to get the job done in a sort of uninspired way (Imagine what Bogart could have done with the role!). His portrayal of a meek, cringing, club-footed waiter is so unconvincing as to be almost laughable.The Turner Classic Movies Network showed this movie as an example of a portrayal of Arabs in a positive light. Gasp! I can't believe somebody down there at TCM considers the character Fareed as a positive image. He's all cowardice, hand-wringing, forever flustered and running in circles, begging not to be hurt, in sharp contrast to the brave Englishman, the tough French woman and the strutting Germans. He borders on being a comic character, certainly a minor one who merely adds local colour and shows how superior the Europeans are. The only thing positive about his image is that he is working against the Germans, although he's pretty much forced into that position after the single act of hiding the Englishman behind the bar when the Germans arrive; afterwards he keeps begging the Englishman to go away and muttering to himself in a trembling voice about being shot against the nearest wall. The TCM presenter thought the Englishman's comment, "You're a great man, Fareed," was a great moment in American cinema, but in fact Fareed had done nothing wonderful at all, simply having opened a drawer and happening to notice that its newspaper lining had a familiar name on it. The Englishman called him great just out of his own excitement, meaning nothing whatsoever about the character of Fareed. It was a complete non-moment.Most reviewers admit that, being made in 1943, it has propaganda elements. But the truth is that it's much worse than that, dealing in the barest stereotypes, so bad as to be cartoonish. An Italian general can't stop singing opera arias and shrinks like a sullen, scolded child when the Germans put him in his place for stepping out of line. The French chambermaid is pretty and offering to trade sex for favours (was that supposed to be a French accent Anne Baxter was speaking with?). The Germans are arrogant and dominating. The English officers are easy-going and likable. The Arab is timorous and cowardly.

**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!

It seems that Frank Capra was too busy when this movie was made back in 1943 otherwise this could have been a nice propaganda movie. Of course, goal of such films was to recruit American soldiers and give them motives to fight on other continents which had not been the American practice until that time. Capra was a grandmaster making gems as "Why we fight" serial of propaganda movies (from where Goebbels could learn a lesson) and everything else made during that time was mostly a second class support but apparently very welcomed. This movie is one of these, among the worst I have seen. First of all, General Rommel is presented as a clown in this movie. Man who played with whole ally armies with outnumbered German army, outdated tanks (among them Italian tanks as well) and no logistics. One of the greatest generals in history of world wars is presented as a thug and moron. Person who made ally army commanders look ridiculous was outwitted by a British corporal. Well, do you need to hear anything else? OK. Highly decorated German officer and war hero is a haughty Lovelace and sneaky hoodlum who takes advantage of a woman in greatest pain. List of stupidity never ends in this semi-retarded American propaganda movie whose roots of banality are visible in today movies of that kind made in Hollywood.