Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Billy Wilder’s World II spy drama “Five Graves to Cairo” starts off grim as hell: A Brit armored tank drives aimlessly through the Egyptian desert, its crew dead except for one man who falls from the vehicle onto the desert sand. John Bramble (Franchot Tone) stumbles and then crawls his way to a nearby town, to a hotel called the Empress of Britain. Recall, the Brits ruled this land, lock, stock and key. But the Brits scrammed. The Nazis are in, full force. The sun-stroked Bramble is certainly dead. Except the hotel owner (Akim Tamiroff) takes pity, and sets Bramble up as the dead-by-bombing waiter Davos. Bramble as Davos learns the latter was a Nazi spy, so now Bramble can play the espionage card triple against Rommel (Erich von Stroheim). This is a great yarn, suspenseful, fun, gritty, and full of the era’s patriotic Us-Against-Them/Country-First propaganda, up to a fault: See the damsel-in-distress (Anne Baxter) of the pic is -– SPOILER ALERT! -– doomed because she dares put family first. It smacks not so much of war-time tragedy, but a sexist streak absent from Wilder in lighter classics a la “Apartment.” B+