Trailer
Plot summary
In neutral Turkey in 1944, Ulysses Diello serves as valet to the British ambassador in Ankara, Sir Frederic Taylor. He approaches L. C. Moyzisch, an attaché at the German embassy, and offers to hand over photographs of top-secret British papers in exchange for £20,000. The Germans, unaware of his position in the ambassador's household, give him the code name Cicero. Diello asks Countess Anna Staviska, a destitute widow known as a society hostess, to host German diplomats at her villa so that he can carry out his dealings discreetly. She agrees in exchange for a share, and he leaves his earnings with her for safekeeping. Colonel von Richter is put in charge of the German side of the bargaining with Cicero, while the British bring in counterintelligence officer Colin Travers to find the spy.
Cast
- Roger Plowdenas Keith Macfadden
- Diane Adrianas Singer on French Record (voice)
- Patrick Whyteas Code Clerk
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about 5 Fingers (1952)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While in Turkey, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz phoned Ludwig Carl Moyzisch, who emerged from hiding to secretly watch the filming; when authorities learned of the contact they tried to stop Mankiewicz leaving the country with the film, and only intercession at the highest levels of the Turkish government let him depart with it.
- The film is based on the true case of Albanian-born Elyesa Bazna, code-named Cicero, who spied for the Nazis in 1943-44 while serving as valet to the British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen, and passed photographed secret documents to German ambassador Franz von Papen through Moyzisch.
- A technical advisor was hired to teach James Mason a little Turkish, but the actor had already picked up enough conversational Turkish during five months in Turkey making Secret of Stamboul (1936), so the advisor's services were not needed.
- Planned location filming in Turkey was scrapped over the high cost of shooting abroad, but director Joseph L. Mankiewicz still took a crew to Ankara for exteriors and background, using Franz von Papen's original Mercedes-Benz limousine, which he found in Istanbul.
