Five Graves to Cairo

Five Graves to Cairo (1943) is Billy Wilder's wartime thriller, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A lone British soldier drags himself out of the desert into a small Saharan town, straight into a hotel the German army is about to seize.

To dodge capture, John Bramble (Franchot Tone) takes the identity of a dead waiter at the Empire Hotel. Then Rommel's staff moves in and makes the place their headquarters. Erich von Stroheim plays the field marshal — clipped, arrogant, terrifyingly calm — and Anne Baxter is the French maid whose loyalties run deeper than the Germans suspect. One slip of the tongue and the disguise becomes a death sentence.

This is early Wilder, years before Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, working a tight espionage plot pulled straight from the 1942 North African campaign. John Seitz's stark black-and-white camerawork earned an Academy Award nomination. It rewards anyone who loves classic Hollywood and lean, brainy war suspense. Stream Five Graves to Cairo (1943) online on iFILM.