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Whistle Stopper - 5 Fingers
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $44.87
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Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: James Mason, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Rennie, Walter Hampden, Oskar Karlweis
Directed By: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303102436
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6303102433
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Running Time: 108
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1952-02-22
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ, OPUS 11
Comment: ***** 1952. Co-written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Based on L.C. Moyzisch's Operation Cicero, the film earned two nominations for the Oscars, one Golden Globe (screenplay) and the 1953 Edgar Allan Poe award. A servant at the British embassy in Ankara delivers top secrets documents to the Germans. Another masterpiece by Mankiewicz who, by using the spy movies genre this time, handles two of his favorite themes; interplay between social classes and the humiliation theme. You can find here Five Fingers [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg. 2 Import - Great Britain ] a DVD release of this movie but, believe me, if you own a DVD player that can read zone 2 DVD's, go to Amazon.fr and choose the Mankiewicz box set released by Carlotta films. This set contains also DRAGONWYCK and A LETTER TO THREE WIVES. The quality of these DVD's is excellent and the three featurettes highly informative.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Reminds me of the old Mission impossible TV shows
Comment: I enjoyed watching the show. The twists and turns as what appears to be an idealistic good man who is a thief is slowly shown as a potential mass murder.
The acting was good.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a movie of intensity and brutality
Comment: the Interrogation technique of this movie is definitely being used to those terrorist suspects prisoned by us. very brutal, vicious, cunning, coercing, intimidating, cruel, and inhumane. this is how to completely dismantle a person's mind. if compare to my recent viewing of 'the lives of others', one of the best movies i've ever seen, those coerce, threaten techniques used by the east germany stasi, seems to suddenly become too gentle, too kind and too polite. cutting off fingers one by one because of the wrong answers indeed is the most efficient way to destroy a trained deep-cover person. all the actors in this film are talented veteran performers. with a good screenplay as a plus, the simple in-house setting never bored the viewers. those flashback memories sometimes loosened up the tense a little bit, but still necessary.
after watched this movie, i often looked at my ten fingers and couldn't help thinking that if somebody threatens to cut off my fingers, even just one, or just the tip of that finger, merely for the purpose of knowing whether i've done that or this....well, would i confess it right away? but what if i simply couldn't remember?
my reason of given 4 stars instead of 5 is this:
i've cut and wounded my fingers and my other parts of my hands so many times during the current life span. there were large and long cuts on my fingers, palms and on the back of my hands that most of the times the bleedings simply couldn't stop and i had to rush to the e.r. to sew them up.
what i could tell you is that even that wound was generated from a careless paper cut, it would hurt like hell and that throbbing pain would also prolong for at least two to three days, sometimes even longer. and during the healing time, you have to keep your whole hand and arm raised higher than your heart to reduce the constant throbbing pain generated by the damaged nerves and from the blood pressure. if you carelessly lowered down your arm, guess what? you might cry out loud by the sudden increase of the shocking pain.
so based upon my personal experiences, if a finger was brutally cut off, the pain would be absolutely unimaginable and unbearable, not to imagine what the pain would be if the fingers were cut off one by one and during prolonged intervals.
but what the aftermaths played by the actor who played that finger-cutting prisoner were simply not true and realistic enough. he screamed his heart out every time when one of his fingers was cut off, but the pain seemed to subside and ebb away right afterward and so soon. and he could also lower down that arm and talk normally. that is absolutely impossible! just like what i've seen in 'kiss, kiss, bang, bang', a finger crashed by a door, like cut off by a knife, fell to the floor, and the guy simply didn't mind and care, still joked around and used that hand normally. it's not just impossible, it's ridiculous!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Five Fingers
Comment: Based on a true story, this movie is one of the best spy thrillers I've ever seen. The screen play is written with such intelligence and absolute wit that it keeps you at the edge of your seat from the moment it beings until the very last surprising, yet satisfying, second of the movie. James Mason's performance in nothing short of brilliant. His charm is utterly captivating. His lines in this movie are totally unforgettable, as are the lines of Danielle Darrieux who told a German officer "Please don't look at me as if you have more than your salary to live on". This is also a story that makes you reflect on the difference between good and bad leadership and how even the best information or knowledge in the hands of "juvenile delinquents" (as someone called them in the movie) can be useless.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Black Comedy Of Espionage And Exquisite Manners; One Of James Mason's Best Films
Comment: Picture the results of the Normandy invasion if the Germans had known in advance that the Second Front would take place there in early June. It turns out they did know...and they didn't believe the information was true. Note that elements of the plot are discussed.
Ulysses Diallo (James Mason) is the valet to the British ambassador to neutral Turkey in 1944. He has perfect manners. He is invaluable to the ambassador. He is trusted. Diallo was born in Albania but came to England at an early age. Determined to become an English gentlemen, he decided that the best way to learn was to become an English gentleman's gentleman. "I may not be a gentleman yet," he tells Countess Anna Staviska (Danielle Darrieux) one evening after she slaps his face, "but I am the best gentleman's gentleman." The Countess has lost her husband and her wealth in the war, and now is an increasingly poor but highly attractive woman who is willing to serve the Germans or the English for money. In Ankara, full of intrigue and agents, there are always opportunities. Diallo had also, at one time, been gentleman's gentleman to her husband.
Diallo decides he can make very large sums of money by photographing secret documents the Ambassador keeps in the embassy safe, to which Diallo has access, and giving them to the Germans. He will insist on being paid in English pounds sterling. He estimates over a period of a few weeks he'll have enough funds to live the life of a gentleman in Rio de Janeiro. He recruits the countess to help him, to be his banker, in exchange for funds he will pay her. And as the days go by, their arrangement extends to her bed. The German's pay, but they aren't sure of the man they have code named Cicero. The information appears to be too good to be true. They suspect a British trick.
The British now begin to suspect there is a leak in the embassy. They send a man from London to find out. Things get dicey, but Diallo makes one last theft and is almost caught by the British. After turning over the photographs and getting his money, he also barely escapes from German agents who now want him, too. What was his last batch of documents he photographed and turned over to the Germans? Specific information on Normandy. The information was so big and came from a source so unlikely -- a valet -- that the Germans didn't believe it and took no action. This is a true story.
As for Diallo, well, he didn't care whether the Germans believed him or not, as long as they paid. He didn't even care what the documents contained as long as they were stamped Top Secret. But at the end of the movie, dining in his dinner jacket on the terrace of his sumptuous Rio villa, served by a discrete gentleman's gentleman of his own, he is visited by his banker and a senior Brazilian police officer. Diallo had already learned that it wasn't wise to trust the Countess. Now he is about to he learn he shouldn't have trusted the Germans.
Espionage may be the name of the game here, but the movie is really a black comedy of exquisite manners. No one could read a line of dialogue with the mixture of cool contempt and self amusement the way James Mason could. He is utterly self possessed. Even when he is taken off guard, as the Countess manages to do, he recovers quickly with a shrug. Mason's Diallo is a complete mercenary, so amused by life that he becomes a captivating villain. Danielle Darrieux almost matches him in the Countess' determination to reach her former social position. They make a fine, selfish, wary couple.
Joseph Mankiewicz directed the movie. The screenplay is credited to Michael Wilson, although IMDb lists Mankiewicz as an uncredited screenwriter. The dialogue is full of Mankiewicz-style amused cynicism. The movie is available in VHS as well as a Region 2 DVD. The DVD looks just fine. There are no extras. The time is long overdue for this movie to appear in a Region 1 DVD.
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