Cairo
                                                     
Director: Wolf Rilla
Year: 1963
Rating: 6.0
If it wasn't for one actor, I would have thought that this 1963 caper film was shot in an earlier decade. And in a sense, it was. This was a remake of the 1950 Asphalt Jungle which was based on a 1949 novel by the great crime writer W.R. Burnett (Little Caesar, High Sierra). It was also shot in black and white giving it an earlier look. By the 60's the caper film had moved to high fashion and a cool sophisticated robbery in which they had to deal with complex security and cleverer technology. This isn't any of that. The robbery was as clever as breaking into your child's piggy bank while he was at school.



Go down a sewer grate and come up inside. No guards. One easy to see laser to trip up the really stupid thieves. A safe. Of course, it is the getting away with an entire city police force after you that is difficult. Where anything can go wrong and usually does in these films thanks to the Code that still hung over films like a scowling father. The real plus of the film is that it was shot entirely in Cairo and Egypt and there is a lot of outside location shooting. Nearly all the actors who are supposed to be Egyptian are played by Egyptian actors - the big exception being Richard Johnson being Ali.



The Major (George Sanders) flies into Cairo with a plan. One he has been working on for years while in prison. Full proof he tells his colleagues. Steal the Pharaoh jewels in the Egyptian Museum. The Major is of course suave and unfailingly polite but as it turns out has a weakness for watching belly dancers and not being able to tear himself away. He pulls together a gang. Ali is the gunman, a getaway driver, an old friend who can blow open a safe, a man with connections (Eric Pohlmann) and the man who can sell them (Walter Rilla, father of the director Wolf Rilla).



The location shooting - mainly in the bazaars - gives it an authentic feel - that and the sweating. A lot of sweating. It moves fairly swiftly, Sanders is a very likable gentleman thief, Johnson becomes more likable as the film moves along. But the entire police force is shutting down the city, going home to home, checking ID cards. You stole the damn Pharaoh jewels. Cairo begins to feel like a very small city. And the belly dancers work all night.