Five Graves to Cairo (1943) Influential in Many Surprising Ways (Review)

One of the most curious Allied operations to occur during World War Two was arguably Operation Copperhead, masterminded by one Brigadier Dudley Clarke. A small military deception, Copperhead saw the Allies dupe the German high command whose intelligence expected General Bernard Montgomery to play a significant role in the 1944 Invasion of Normandy. Clarke’s plan saw him recruit an effective look-alike for Monty, newly transferred to England following his victory in North Africa against legendary German General and military theorist Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The imitator, a humble second lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps and sometimes musical hall performer by the name of M.E. Clifton James, was charged with visiting several Mediterranean bases such as Gibraltar and Algiers where the Allies knew German intelligence officers would spot him and report, what they presumed to be the British General’s whereabouts, back up the chain of command.

Whilst there is no clear indication that James’ appearances as Montgomery affected German views of the imminent invasion threat, it is widely believed that the Abwehr did believe that James was the real thing and the fact that, at this stage, Germany was in utter confusion regarding the Allied invasion plans may explain this ruse’s lack of real impact. Nevertheless, Operation Copperhead lived on, firstly as a 1954 bestselling memoir from James entitled I Was Monty’s Double and again four years later as a film of the same name starring James as himself. But a little-known fact is that Brigadier Clarke got the whole idea for the operation from Billy Wilder’s 1943 film, Five Graves to Cairo, now released to Blu-ray by Eureka’s Masters of Cinema range.

Based on Hotel Imperial, a 1917 play by Hungarian playwright Lajos Bíró, Five Graves to Cairo opens with British corporal, John Bramble (Franchot Tone), the lone survivor of his tank crew’s massacre at Tobruk, wandering exhausted through the Saharan desert. Sanctuary comes in the shape of a past-its-best oasis hotel which is nonetheless comfortingly named the Empress of Britain, run by a hapless hotelier named Farid (Akim Tamiroff) and his French maid, Mouche (Anne Baxter). However, just minutes after he sets foot across the threshold, a German advance party led by Lieutenant Schwegler (Peter van Eyck) arrive to commandeer the ravaged hotel in time for the imminent arrival of their superior, Erwin Rommel (Erich von Stroheim). Thinking fast, Bramble assumes the identity of the hotel’s waiter Davos, killed the night before in a German air raid. On Rommel’s arrival, Bramble is alarmed to learn that Davos was a valuable informer and spy for the Germans and he must keep of the pretence to undertake the next stage of his mission, which is to prepare five Nazi supply dumps that Rommel personally hid along the road to Cairo when disguised as an archaeologist shortly before the war – the titular Five Graves to Cairo. It was the pre-war deception of the Rommel character and Bramble’s own double-cross heroism that inspired Clarke’s Operation Copperhead and indeed his first choice for Monty’s double was the Hollywood-based English actor Miles Mander, who appears here as British POW Col. Fitzhume and bears more than a passing resemblance to Montgomery. Overtures were made to Mander to do his duty for King and Country but he was found to be far too tall to convince in the role of Montgomery, and eventually, James was found to undertake the mission.

Despite Quentin Tarantino placing it in a list of his 10 favourites of all time, Five Graves to Cairo is now something of a lesser-known work from Wilder and his long-time screenwriting collaborator, Charles Brackett; though it did use to be a regular fixture in the TV schedules of many an afternoon in the 80s and 90s. This is probably the first time that I have watched this since one of those matinees of my childhood, and it’s sense of crackling tension, suspense and subterfuge, as well as a liberal sprinkling of humour, still stands up relatively well. Several moments still stand out, from the memorably eerie opening sequence of a British tank which, barring Bramble, is populated by corpses and is rolling relentlessly across the seemingly endless desert terrain, to the subtly edge-of-the-seat moment in which the anxious Farid shuffles beneath the imperviously cool gaze of Schwegler to hide the exhausted Bramble from view. This was Wilder’s second film in Hollywood, hot on the heels of his success with The Major and the Minor a year earlier, and it updates Biro’s source material from World War One to the then contemporaneous conflict of World War Two and undeniably for propaganda purposes, with a nice line in defending the evacuation of Dunkirk that is most evident in an exchange between Bramble and the embittered Mouche whose brother is languishing in a POW camp after being captured by the Nazis thereafter, she argues, he had been left on the beaches by the British.

Initially, Wilder had set his sights on casting Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in the central roles of the British soldier and the Frenchwoman, but had to make do with Franchot Tone and, on loan from Twentieth Century Fox, Anne Baxter. As a result, cinemagoers would have to wait three years before Grant and Bergman shared the screen, in Alfred Hitchcock’s excellent postwar Nazis-in-America spy drama, Notorious. Though Baxter is rather good in the role of Mouche, it’s fair to say that Tone isn’t on the same level as the leading man and that Five Graves to Cairo would have benefitted from a stronger central pairing like Grant and Bergman. I would have much-preferred Grant in the role of Bramble, the British soldier living on his wits under the noses of the enemy, primarily because Tone makes little effort whatsoever in hiding his American accent and is therefore unconvincing.

Wilder was, of course, a huge fan of his fellow Austrian von Stroheim, both as an actor and as a director, and von Stroheim rose to the challenge afforded him with great aplomb and idiosyncratic manner – securing authentic German field glasses, a whisk and a fully loaded 35mm Leica camera to set off his military costume. It’s a measure of how effective the performance is that, for many, when they think of Rommel it is von Stroheim’s ramrod-straight, fly-swatting depiction that comes to mind. It’s an influential take too, choosing to depict the German general not as a Nazi villain but as a professional soldier, chivalrous and proud. Such traits would shape what has become known as the Rommel myth, an argument used by historians critical of the depiction of Rommel as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a participant in the plot to kill Hitler on 20th July 1944, the failure of which ultimately led to his forced suicide. The myth – arguably bolstered by Churchill’s outspoken respect for him (in the House he referred to him as a bold and clever opponent, in contract to the understandably derogatory and critical dialogue normally reserved for the enemy at the time) would continue on the big screen long after Five Graves to Cairo, most notably with the 1951 film The Desert Fox which starred James Mason as Rommel, a role he would return to in 1953 for The Desert Rats.

Likewise, the performance of Rommel’s loyal aide, Schwegler, by Peter van Eyck in one of his earliest, calling-card roles is similarly influential on the war movie genre a whole, with the character sharing DNA with, amongst others, Derren Nesbitt’s pure Aryan SS officer Major von Hapen in 1968’s rip-roaring Where Eagles Dare, Wehrmacht Sergeant Wilhelm Wicki and Major Dieter Hellström of the Gestapo (Gedeon Burkhard and August Diehl) in Tarantino’s own homage-fuelled Inglorious Basterds from 2009 and any movie featuring coolly louche Anton Diffring as a German officer that you’d care to name. Just as familiar though perhaps less welcome is the comic relief that plays on national stereotyping evinced in the characters played by Tamiroff and Bonanova. Whilst it is clear that the use of comic relief is justified for Wilder and Brackett, hinting at their greater use of humour in later productions, it’s a shame that Bonanova’s Italian officer, in particular, is depicted as a genial and somewhat vain fool. Tamiroff fares better, not only by being a better performer with a greater range, but by the fact that the Egyptian Farid’s eager-to-please behaviour is more sympathetic when once considers his actions arise from wanting to save not only that which he cherishes, his business, but also his own skin. Beneath the bumbling comedy, there’s a truth to this character that we would do well not to overlook.

This release is the film’s UK debut to Blu-ray and boasts a 1080p 4k restored presentation, along with extras such as a radio adaptation first broadcast by Lux Radio Theatre in 1943, a trailer, Wilder on the movie and an audio commentary from film scholar Adrian Martin.

Thanks for reading our review of Five Graves to Cairo

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