Five Graves to Cairo

Debbi and I wrapped the week up with a trip to the Stanford Theatre to see a couple of films.

The first film was my annual viewing of Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), which still delights me every time I see it, even though I'm getting dangerously close to having the lines memorized. Can't really get enough of Eva Marie Saint, and it's a little easier now to see the young Cary Grant in the eyes of the older version seen here, although he did become more distinguished and less comically goofy as he got older. And Martin Landau now officially looks astonishingly young in this film.

The other was an early Billy Wilder film, Five Graves to Cairo (1943), a World War II movie made only a year or two after the events it depicts might have occurred (were they not fictional). British Corporal John J. Bramble (Franchot Tone, whom I've never heard of, but who seems like a darker version of William Holden as Sgt. J. J. Sefton in Stalag 17 - coincidence?) is the lone survivor of his tank following a battle in Egypt. He stumbles into a desert hotel shortly before German troops arrive to occupy it. The hotel is staffed only by its owner, Farid (Akim Tamiroff), and maid, Mouche (Anne Baxter). The Germans are represented by Lt. Schwegler (Peter van Eyck) and General Erwin Rommel (enigmatically played by Erich von Stroheim).

Bramble adopts the role of the lame waiter of the hotel, killed in a bombing raid, and is stunned to find that the waiter had been a German spy. At first inclined to kill Rommel, his priorities change when he learns of the German plans for taking Cairo (the "five graves") and decides it's more important to learn their plans and then get back to the Allies to let them know the plans.

A wrench in his plans is Mouche, who is French and blames the British for abandoning her people - and her brothers - at Dunkirk. One brother is in a prison camp, and she tries to bargain with the Germans for his release, while trying to decide whether to expose Bramble's disguise.

As with most of Wilder's films, this one is basically a dark character piece. While Bramble is basically a heroic figure, Mouche is the emotional heart of the film, more personally committed to her goals than is Bramble (or Farid, who's just trying to survive). The very beautiful Baxter does a spirited turn in the role, especially when she has a target against which to fling her ire.

It's not, however, a tremendously deep film; it's actually a suspense/action film very much in the mold of 50s Hitchcock - seven years early.