Five Graves to Cairo

North Africa, 1942. A British tank is hit in the desert and one soldier survives: Bramble. He walks to an abandoned hotel. The owner and the maid Mouche hide him. Soon the German command moves into the same hotel with Field Marshal Rommel at its head. Bramble passes himself off as a waiter who has just died. Then it emerges that the waiter was in fact a German agent, and Rommel expects information from him. Billy Wilder directs and wrote the screenplay with Charles Brackett. Erich von Stroheim plays Rommel, Franchot Tone plays Bramble and Anne Baxter plays Mouche. It was made while the war was going on, immediately after the events; Rommel was alive at the time and the North African front had not yet closed. Erich von Stroheim had been a famous director of the silent period and was acting late in his career; his Rommel is arrogant, clever and entirely certain of himself. The puzzle at the centre is simple and well built: what the five graves are and how Rommel supplies himself across the desert. The sardonic language of Wilder's later films is already here; the lines are sharp for a war picture. Mouche is the most complicated element; she considers working with the Germans for the sake of her family, and the film does not judge her. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood war films and Billy Wilder. Who it is not for: it carries propaganda, the history is loose, and the ending is built to the requirements of its moment.