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I wanted to but couldn't!

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The film opens in 1944 at an embassy affair in neutral Turkey. The German ambassador, von Papen, slips out of the ballroom where the soprano is carrying on about the ride of the Valkyries, remarking, "Wagner makes me sick," and chats with Danielle Darrieux, a wealthy French countess who has been chased from France to Poland to England by falling bombs. She pleads with von Papen for money. She'll do anything to regain her estate and its treasures. She can be very beguiling. She can be a spy. Von Papen excuses himself politely and leaves. Another guest is standing nearby, eyeballing Darrieux. She sneers a little and tells him, "Please, don't stand there staring at me as if you were worth more than your salary." Good old, literate Joseph Mankiewitz, the writer and director who gave us "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride." Most of the good lines are given to James Mason as the British Ambassador's valet in Ankara. Valets, like most servants, are given what the sociologist Erving Goffman called "non-person treatment." They're regarded as items of convenience of pieces of furniture, and they know enough to keep family secrets. Mason, as "Cicero", his code name in German Intelligence, knows enough to keep family secrets too. He also knows enough to get the combination to the embassy's safe, remove valuable documents, photograph them, and sell them to German agents, no matter how dubious those German agents might be. They continue to suspect that he's a British double agent and they fail to act on his information, even the time and place of the D-Day landings on Normandy.There are several double crosses, which I won't describe in detail. When Mason has all the money he thinks he needs to live like a gentleman in Rio de Janeiro with his former employer, Darrieux, as his mistress, she runs off to Switzerland with all the dough. And when Mason finally reaches Rio and stands on his veranda in the evening breeze, drinking high-falutin' wine, an incident takes place that I don't believe because I think it may have been ripped off from "The Lavender Hill Mob." In the end it's a tale of morality. The moral is: Make sure you pay your charwoman enough so that she doesn't take a Minox camera to the material you've stashed in the family vault.

Supposedly based on a true story, a valet uses his position at British embassy to steal WWII secrets to sell to the Germans.What a superbly tight script that stays on the compelling track the whole time. We watch lowly valet Diello (Mason) use nothing but wits and guts to outmaneuver both the British and the Germans. He's not a sympathetic lead character, always unusual for a Hollywood production (TCF). But you can't help admiring his ability to outwit the professionals, even if he is completely self-centered. I get the feeling Diello sees himself as a natural born aristocrat denied that position by the fortunes of birth. So, by golly, he's going to use those talents to get the wealth and position he deserves, but which European society has denied him.Mason is simply superb in a tailor-made part. He projects both the icy intelligence and curt politeness that the role requires. I sweated a bucket load when the cleaning lady rummages around the closet, while Diello photographs embassy secrets. If she finds the power switch, he's toast. Great scene. Note too, how there're no obvious good guys-bad guys, also unusual for a WWII drama. The British are slightly favored, but at least the Germans aren't caricatured. It's more like one opportunist (Diello) is exploiting both sides impartially, and they're both after him.Then too, what guy wouldn't lose his head over the delectable Darrieux, even a guy as calculating as Diello. All of which makes the ending one of the most ironically satisfying in movie annals. I'm betting this was one of the best films to come out of that spare movie year of 1952. So if you haven't seen it, do.

A movie about a master spy cannot get better than this. It's all there: the stupid officials, the double crossings, the beautiful, conniving lady, the big plans and an excellent, riveting suspense scene involving a dutiful Turkish cleaning woman. Alfred Hitchcock could not have done it better.5 Fingers finds both director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and James Mason in top form. The role of an Albanian who rose to become personal butler of a British Ambassador is tailor made for that great British actor. His character Ulysses Diello is so SMUG, it is really hard not to like him. Diello has a dream that is very common and simple: He wants to get up there, in a white dinner jacket - it's absolutely disarming! French actress Danielle Darrieux gives great support and brings elegance and style to the movie.Curious detail: The story is based on a book, recounting true events, by a former member of the German diplomatic staff in Ankara, called L. C. Moyzisch. The Moyzisch character also stars in the movie – as the principal buffoon of the picture! Would be interesting to know how the real man reacted to this movie.

Though Mank didn't take a screenplay credit his 'voice' is evident in such touches as when the German Ambassador tells Moise that Von Ribbentrop has assigned the code name 'Cicero' to Diello and remarks dryly that it is amazing that Von Ribbentrop had even heard of Cicero, or, a little earlier when the same ambassador is in conversation with the impoverished Countess Ann Staviska and assures her that after the war the German government will look after her interests and she remarks wryly that they are already looking after her Polish estates. In 1952 Mank was still firing on all cylinders and with both A Letter To Three Wives and All About Eve under his belt plus two sets of Oscars on his shelves he was able to extract lots of mileage out of this true story of espionage in neutral Turkey during the Second World War. James Mason, a fine actor in anyone's book, has his work cut out to share a screen with Danielle Darrieux, one of France's finest, but he contrives to pull out something extra to keep up with her and the result is an acting feast. It's difficult to create suspense when the outcome is known - at least to those who read the book on which it is based - but Mank is up to the task and delivers an all-round gem.