FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO

This early Billy Wilder film may not be one of his several masterpieces but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. It's a war movie but one that's based on a play, (by Lajos Biro, no less), and which takes place for the most part in a North African hotel during WW2, with the events depicted only months in the recent past and featuring among its cast of characters none other than Field Marshall Rommel, (a wonderfully cast Erich von Stroheim). The film, of course, is "Five Graves to Cairo" and rather than being a conventional war film is one of the best comedy-thrillers of its period.

Franchot Tone is superb as the British soldier who's mistaken for a German agent by Rommel and his troops, Anne Baxter makes for a surprisingly good French maid and Akim Tamiroff is splendid as the hotel's Egyptian owner. It's talkative, yes but with a Charles Brackett/Billy Wilder screenplay the talk is, naturally, good and the whole thing has a delightful Hitchcockian flavour to it. An underrated movie that is well worth reviving.