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Five Graves to Cairo Overview:

Five Graves to Cairo (1943) was a War - Thriller/Suspense Film directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Charles Brackett.

SYNOPSIS

The Sahara heats up as Allied spies try to outwit "Desert Fox" Rommel in this political thriller ably helmed by WIlder. Tone takes refuge in an oasis hotel run by Tamiroff just after the Afrika Korps rumbles through. He assumes a dead hotel waiter's identity, who also happens to have been a spy for Rommel. The intelligent Wilder-Brackett screenplay keeps things bouncing along with intense suspense and a dash of humor.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

Academy Awards 1943 --- Ceremony Number 16 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best Art DirectionArt Direction: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegte; Interior Decoration: Bertram GrangerNominated
Best CinematographyJohn SeitzNominated
Best Film EditingDoane HarrisonNominated
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Five Graves to Cairo BlogHub Articles:

Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and The Desert Fox

By 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 10, 2020 From 4 Star Films

For modern audiences especially, the movie’s opening crawl gives us a bit of helpful context. It’s June, 1942.  Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps was pounding the Brits back toward Cairo and the Suez Canal. His notoriety as a tactician and “The Desert Fox” is ... Read full article

Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

By Beatrice on Sep 19, 2014 From Flickers in Time

Five Graves to Cairo Directed by Billy Wilder Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett based on the Lajos Biró play Hotel Imperial 1943/USA Paramount Pictures Repeat viewing/TCM DVD Billy Wilder’s second directorial effort has little of his characteristic humor or cynicism.  It is,... Read full article

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Five Graves to Cairo Quotes:

[Sebastiano, an Italian general, has just learned that he has been assigned to a hotel room with no running water by the condescending German officers]
Gen. Sebastiano: Another kick in the face! They let us die, but they don't let us wash! Well, what did we expect? As we say in Milano, "When you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas!"
Cpl. John J. Bramble: That's right, sir.
[Sebastiano looks at Bramble, nervously]
Gen. Sebastiano: [cautioning him] You haven't heard anything...
Cpl. John J. Bramble: Of course not, sir. From so far away, how can I hear what they say in Milano?
Gen. Sebastiano: [smiles] Good!
Field Marshal Rommel: [to Mouche] I don't like women in the morning. Go away!
Field Marshal Rommel: [to Mouche, as she serves him coffee in bed] Your hands are neat - why isn't the spoon?
Cpl. John J. Bramble: [to Farid] You're talking through your fez!
Mouche: I'm not afraid of generals...
Lt. Schwegler: You're not?
Mouche: ...it's lieutenants I'm afraid of.
See More Quotes from Five Graves to Cairo
Five Graves to Cairo Facts
On 13 December 1943, about just over six months after this film was first released in the USA, this movie's stars Anne Baxter and Franchot Tone reprized their characters of Mouche and Corporal John J. Bramble from this movie for a radio broadcast of a Lux Radio Theatre show.
On the first day that director Billy Wilder's hero, Erich von Stroheim arrived on set, Wilder ran to the wardrobe department to welcome him. He said: "This is a very big moment in my life . . . that I should now be directing the great Stroheim. Your problem, I guess, was that you were ten years ahead of your time." Von Stroheim replied: "Twenty."
This was the third filmed adaptation of Lajos Biró's play "Hotel Imperial", made previously only four years earlier with Hotel Imperial and sixteen years prior with Hotel Imperial. An earlier film production of this play to be filmed as I Loved a Soldier was canceled. Hotel Sahara was not an adaption of this play.
Billy Wilder wanted the role of Cpl. John J. Bramble/Davos (ultimately played by Franchot Tone) to be played by Cary Grant, but Grant was unavailable.
This movie predominantly takes place in a fictitious village called Sidi Halfaya but the production originally wanted to set it in the town of Sidi Barani, an Egyptian town which was a location of actual Word War II combat. Sidi Barani was captured by Nazi German Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps in 1941 and then taken back by the British Army in 1942.
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