5 Fingers

Joseph L. Mankiewicz – 1952 – USA
 

In the wake of James Mason’s famous portrayal of doomed hero Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951), I suppose the angle for this movie was to now have him play one of World War II’s most famous traitors, a British valet who sent state secrets to Germany under the moniker ‘Cicero.’  As a director, Mankiewicz was a reliable avoider of risks, who did routine things particularly well; making him prone to winning Oscars but keeping him from being remembered as a real auteur.  Despite the fascinating milieu of wartime espionage in Europe, 5 Fingers feels a little too late and too routine, bolstered primarily by a subdued central performance by the always great Mason.  Done four or five years earlier by a director like Carol Reed or even Fritz Lang, it might’ve been great, but the Mankiewicz of 1952 was far too entrenched in the mainstream of respectability to really plumb the depths of what makes a story like this interesting in the first place; i.e. not the cloak and dagger details, but the psychology in back of ‘Cicero’s’ decision to betray his country in the first place.  Not a bad film, by any means, surely relevant to anyone interested in the hidden stories of WWII, and of course a score by the great Bernard Herrmann is always a major plus in my book.