Billy Wilder's Take On The War

Five Graves To Cairo played TCM last week. It seems incredible that Billy Wilder's second directorial effort is not available on DVD. Five Graves has been overlooked ... dismissed really ... as mere wartime propaganda. Even co-writer Charles Brackett identified it as such in a late 50s interview. Wilder subverts wartime movie convention throughout Five Graves, it being a riff on combat dramatics taken seriously by others (WWII films were closely monitored by the Office Of War Information). He'd not be the first or only director to break rank with conflict protocol. Ernst Lubitsch had made mischief with To Be Or Not To Be, a comedy seasoned with menace that played straight the enemy threat even as it ridiculed same. Being a Lubitsch acolyte, Wilder had to have been inspired and influenced by To Be Or Not To Be, utilizing no small part of its unique approach when writing Five Graves To Cairo. The films have a lot in common, with more wit between them than combined effort of war-themed filmmaking otherwise. Wilder, like Lubitsch, saw humor in the grimmest situations. Five Graves' concept is a fanciful one that could easily have tipped into comedy. Had Wilder done it mere months past declaration of peace, I've no doubt he'd have aimed direct to patron funny bones --- the thing's rib-tickling enough as it stands. What a relief for audiences in 1943 to encounter a war movie so brimming with cheek and the unexpected.

Brackett and Wilder wrote (fast) just in front of daily dispatches. News out of the North African campaign anticipated Allied victory, but it could've finished the other way, a contingency that would neatly have scuttled Five Graves To Cairo. German Gen. Erwin Rommel's defeat propelled completion of B&W's spin on the topic, giving Paramount a release timed perfectly to breaking news. Casting might have gone differently amidst less hurried effort. Cary Grant was initially sought for the male lead. He fortunately turned that down. Ingrid Bergman had been set as of November 1942 in the role played eventually by Anne Baxter, the former's participation okayed by David Selznick, who held her contract, but nonstop work on Casablanca and For Whom the Bell Tolls made necessary a rest period. Grant and Bergman would have made of Five Graves a very different show, Grant being at the least on-set fussy/image protective by this time, and sufficiently empowered to have his way vis-à-vis directors who disagreed. Bergman's participation would bring as baggage Selznick's interference, something Wilder could not necessarily have overcome at such an early stage of his directing career.



Had these been Bergman and Grant, we might not have so good a picture as Five Graves To Cairo to look at.



Having Franchot Tone and Anne Baxter as below the title leads enabled Wilder to put more of his own vision across. Besides, this director's idea of Five Graves' star was supporting player in name only Erich von Stroheim,  tabbed to play real-life arch-nemesis Field Marshal Rommel, focal point and loving object of Wilder's fascination throughout filming. Stroheim arrives a couple of reels in and dominates from there. The camera, as though hypnotized, places him center. Von was something of an idol, if not role model, for his director (Wilder had gotten an autographed EvS photo while still in Germany and kept it throughout his life).  Stroheim was indulged as to character embellishment and even dialogue additions to keep Rommel dominant. Bigger names than Tone and Baxter would have sidelined EvS, certainly he'd have ceded, if reluctantly, before Grant and Bergman. As it is, The Man We Loved To Hate rolls over a not-so-imposing cast like Rommel's tanks, Wilder his complicit all the while of doing so.

Writers Brackett and Wilder came up with a brilliant back story for Stroheim's Rommel. You'd think it was all true for conviction they brought to such an audacious set-up. Seems Rommel had set conquest plans in motion by entering Egypt years before in the guise of an archaeologist, at which time he and a team of like-minded Germans planted caches of weaponry over hundreds of desert miles in anticipation of a later siege. I don't doubt a lot of viewers in 1943 took Brackett and Wilder's imagining for fact. I almost did, or at least wanted to. The real Rommel had been put to rout some months before Five Graves to Cairo opened, his African campaign scuttled by the Allies. Wilder and Stroheim's interpretation of the Desert Fox may not have been accurate, but it was great showmanship, Rommel having assumed a near mythic status among great enemy tacticians of the war. In fact, a still living Rommel was the key to selling Five Graves To Cairo, a genuine star name off front pages as opposed to mere movie actors plying all too familiar trade. Did it matter if Stroheim resembled him? Not much, especially now that Rommel was  sidelined and no longer a threat. Besides, how could the real thing be so entertaining as Von?

Paramount's topic, being hot as desert sands Wilder photographed, needed to be got out quickly as possible to trade on the public's awareness of recent North Africa victories. Part of excitement surrounding Five Graves To Cairo was said rush into theatres. This one was handled more like a newsreel than a feature, timeliness of the subject making urgent its earliest possible availability. General release had been set for July 1943, however, Paramount sales staff jumped the gun, in Variety's words, by going for May pre-release dates in New York and other Eastern/Southern areas. Rushed From Lab To You For Earliest Possible Bookings To Catch The Flood Tide Of World Attention, said trade ads published at the beginning of May just prior to Five Graves' opening.

Judging from posters for Five Graves To Cairo, you'd think Von Stroheim was the whole show ... and he very nearly was.

Paramount is negotiating with Erich von Stroheim to make a series of personal appearances with the film, said Variety in advance of the pre-release. Von had not enjoyed such notoriety in years, but did it go to his bullet head? He'd initially agreed to help kick-off five or six key spots for the film, but saw the deal collapse in the wake of demands he made for what Variety termed too much coin, adding Von Stroheim some time ago agreed to make personals at nominal cost, but since then he has upped his figure, and Paramount finally killed the idea. Trades did not report specifics of the actor's price tag, but it was known that Stroheim received $5000 weekly while working on Five Graves To Cairo. Whatever were circumstances, the Stroheim tour was canceled and publicity went on without his further participation. Von could take solace in knowing his face loomed largest in all advertising. Never again would he be so prominently featured in selling of a film in which he appeared. You'd have thought Stroheim's career would get a major uptick from Five Graves, but his Rommel was after all just a more sophisticated take on Horrid Huns he'd played since the previous war. Wilder would remember though, and come calling again with Sunset Boulevard, a part not so imposing as Rommel, and for just that reason perhaps, not one Stroheim would recall with pleasure or satisfaction.