More James Mason! See 5 Fingers (1952), by Michael Wilson and Joseph Mankiewicz

Re-posted by N.S.

More James Mason! 5 Fingers (1952), by Michael Wilson and Joseph Mankiewicz

I re-posted this picture a few years ago, but soon thereafter, the KK pounced on it, and it was gone, so don't dither about watching it, the way I did.

By N.S.

Re-posted from Tuesday, December 06, 2022

A California Reader has put James Mason in my head, plus I’ve been intermittently reading Ronald Haver’s 1988 book, A Star is Born, about the 1954 George Cukor/Moss Hart masterpiece, which co-starred Mason and Judy Garland, and which I saw three times in a month last summer.

It turns out that a wealth of wonderful Mason pictures are available for free online. We recently broadcast Odd Man Out (1947), which ACR considers to have been his greatest performance.

The following, acclaimed picture is also a very big deal. Joe Mankiewicz made it between his two great masterpieces, All about Eve (1950) and The Barefoot Contessa (1954).

[Update: Last March, during "Oscar month," TCM re-broadcast All about Eve, and I concluded that it is not only not the 14th greatest masterpiece ever made, but that it is no masterpiece at all, and that was Joe Mankiewicz and Darryl F. Zanuck's fault. I'm working on an article on the matter.]

Michael Wilson got sole credit for the script, though Mankiewicz, who was one of the greatest screenwriters ever [?], of course worked on it, as well. (Whenever I need to recall Mankiewicz’ name, the name “Manischewitz” instead comes to mind.)

[Update: Joe “Manischewitz” was simultaneously one of the most brilliant and one of the most overrated figures in Hollywood. He won four Oscars he didn't deserve, but produced one top 30 masterpiece--The Philadelphia Story, at MGM--and wrote and directed one top 200 masterpiece--The Barefoot Contessa (1954), at 20th Century Fox.]

Michael Who? Michael Wilson was one of the ten or 20 greatest screenwriters ever, but aside from his agitations as a card-carrying and later blacklisted Communist, he was a quiet, private man. In 1951, he wrote A Place in the Sun (circa #50) for the super-chief, George Stevens; in 1957, he and Carl Foreman co-scripted The Bridge on the River Kwai (circa #7) for David Lean; and in 1962, he and Robert Bolt co-wrote Lawrence of Arabia (circa #7) for Lean. Wilson won Oscars for Place and Kwai.

If you check new york magazine’s list of the Top 100 screenwriters, you will find Wilson nowhere.


261,153 views Apr 29, 2023
5 Fingers, known also as Five Fingers, is a 1952 American spy film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and produced by Otto Lang. The screenplay written by Michael Wilson was based on the 1950 book Operation Cicero (original German: Der Fall Cicero) by Ludwig Carl Moyzisch, Nazi commercial attaché at the German embassy in Ankara, Turkey (1943–44).

The film is based on the true story of Albanian-born Elyesa Bazna, a spy with the code name of Cicero who worked for the Nazis in 1943–44 while he was employed as valet to the British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen. Bazna would photograph top-secret documents and deliver the pictures to Franz von Papen, the German ambassador in Turkey and a former German chancellor, using Moyzisch as the intermediary.

James Mason plays Ulysses Diello (Cicero), the character based on Bazna. The film also stars Danielle Darrieux, Michael Rennie, Herbert Berghof and Walter Hampden. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Director for Mankiewicz and Best Screenplay for Wilson. Mankiewicz was also nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America and Wilson was nominated for Best Written American Drama by the Writers Guild of America. He won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay and the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Screenplay.





The WEJB/NSU Theater, 1896-1981:

The Haunted Castle: George Melies (1896);

Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902);

The Great Train Robbery (1903);

The Wizard of Oz (1910);

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Harry Carey and John “Jack” Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917), the First Feature-Length, “Cheyenne Harry” Western;

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918), Starring and Directed by Victor Sjöström (Seastrom);

Starring “Jack”: See the 1920 Silent Picture Classic of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton’s One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director;

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart) with English subtitles;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Charlie, in The Gold Rush (1925);

Lon Chaney, in The Phantom of the Opera (1925);

King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, and Harry Behn’s The Big Parade (1925), Starring Gilbert and Adore!

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

John Ford’s 1926 Western, 3 Bad Men;

Barrymore and Astor in Don Juan (1926);

When a Man Loves (1927), Starring “Jack” and Dolores Costello;

Josef von Sternberg and Ben Hecht’s Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture;

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s Restored, Classic Silent Picture, Wings (1927), One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners;

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners);

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), the Greatest S/F Picture Ever, Plus Its Soundtrack Suite;

Frank Borzage and Austin Strong’s Seventh Heaven (1927);

Garbo and Gilbert in Love (1927);

Samson Raphaelson, Alfred A. Cohn, Jack Jarmuth and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the First-Ever Talkie, Starring Al Jolson, by Warner Brothers;

King Vidor’s The Crowd 1928;

Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928);

Dorothy Scarborough, Frances Marion, and Victor Sjöström's ("Seastrom") 1928 silent, The Wind (with additional videos showing Miss Gish's introduction, Robert Osborne's intro and outro, and visual highlights)

Bessie Smith in St. Louis Blues (talkie, short, 1929);

See Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabst’s world-famous silent, Pandora’s Box (1929);

See Louise Brooks in Pabst's Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929);

See John Wayne, in His First Starring Role in an “A” Picture, Raoul Walsh’s Western Epic Talky, The Big Trail (1930)”;

Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s First Talkie: M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) (M: A City Searches for a Murderer);

Paul Robeson in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (talkie, 1933);

"John Wayne Movie: See over 3 Hours of Foreign Legion Action! Classic Early 1930s Serial, The Three Musketeers;

The Man Who Knew too Much (1934): The Original Version of the Early Hitchcock Classic;

John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934), Starring Will Rogers, with Hattie McDaniel;

The Fighting Westerner (1935);

Kate Hepburn in the Super Chief’s Quality Street (1937);

Cary Grant and Roz Russell in Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940);

Zero’s Since You Went Away (1944);

Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946);

The Lethal Lure (1946);

Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947);

William Dieterle’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948);

Jules Dassin, Albert Malz, and Malvin Wald’s The Naked City (1948), Plus Music;

Pierre Chenal and Richard Wright's Native Son (1951);

Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953);

Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954);

R.G. Springsteen and Montgomery Pittman’s Come Next Spring (1956);

Robert Wise and Abraham Polonsky’s Odds against Tomorrow (1959);

Capra's Pocketful of Miracles (1961);

Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966);

See Geraldine Page in Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory (1966, TV movie);

Lee Marvin as Sergeant Ryker (1963/1968); and

Paul Newman, in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981) (exclusive review); The movie.