The Disoriented Empress

A British tank crewman stumbles across the desert, delirious, and somehow makes it to a hotel in North Africa called the Empress of Britain. So begins Billy Wilder's 1943 American propaganda film Five Graves to Cairo. Like most of Wilder's movies, this one has a very sharp screenplay, in this case by Wilder and Charles Brackett. Stars Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, and Erich von Stoheim put in good performances, too.

Baxter's is the most memorable. She plays a French chambermaid named Mouche who has somehow ended up working in this North African hotel. It later turns out she has resentment for the British for how they handled Dunkirk and, while she won't squeal on John (Tone) when Rommel (Von Stroheim) and his men take over the hotel, she still wants to find favour with someone in the German brass. She has a brother in a concentration camp and she's willing to do anything to get him out. The film, despite having been made during the era of the Hays Code, manages to make it clear that means sexual favours.

Her tragic story plays effectively alongside the more straightforward adventure tale of John's. He masquerades as a waiter who'd been killed in a bombardment before the Germans came. Then he finds out that waiter was a German agent. So he finds himself pretending to be a waiter pretending to be a Nazi spy.

The film nicely keeps up the tension on his predicament. There's never any real chemistry between him and Baxter which is perhaps why this film hasn't garnered the same kind of veneration as Casablanca or other great wartime films. But it's still pretty good.

Five Graves to Cairo is available on The Criterion Channel as part of this month's collection of 1940s Billy Wilder movies.

Little Depth for Dark Waters

Of the many gothic melodramas from the mid-20th century that portray a woman being made to think she's crazy by people trying to cover up a crime, 1944's Dark Waters is not one of the best. But it's not bad and if you have a particular love for the gaslighting genre you'll find it a decent indulgence.

Merle Oberon stars as Leslie Calvin, a young woman who, as the film opens, is recovering from the traumatic experience of losing her parents when the boat the three were on was sunk. Filled with despair, she has a burst of enthusiasm when she receives a letter from her aunt and uncle in Louisiana, inviting her to stay with them in their massive bayou manor.

For some reason they don't show up at the train station but Leslie is rescued by the handsome and impossibly good Dr. George Grover (Franchot Tone) who takes her to aunt and uncle's.

Leslie and George ought to have been a little more wary when they discovered that two dodgy fellows played by Thomas Mitchell and Elisha Cook, Jr. are also staying at the house. Even more tellingly, once they find out Leslie's now deathly afraid of water, the two strange men jump on every pretext to drag her out onto a boat or across some treacherous little platform over the river.

When the reality is finally revealed it's more than slightly improbable and doesn't make sense based on what we've learned. This and the fact that George is intensely boring keep the film from being really effective but the performances from Oberon, Mitchell, and Cook, Jr. go a long way. There's also an effective appearance from an underused Rex Ingram as a former servant.

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A brace of solid angles took the fight.
A spider stretched between the bars of steel.
A jagged spark imperilled magic light.
A drawing of a cam'ra makes it real.
The canvas flat upon the water calls.
A misty spiral caged the sails to spill.
The solar rays descend like yellow walls.
Between the drops of sweat's a tired will.
The extra egg was pushed into the rice.
The lagging sun consumed its yolk in days.
The rusty engine starts but once or twice.
A heavy rain has wrecked the tops'l stays.
A calendar of pebbles makes the rock.
A timeless stone permits the empty clock.