James Mason's own favorite among his American films, Five Fingers is a spy thriller that goes the others one better by being based on a true story. Mason, in a truly engaging performance, portrays the spy known as “Cicero.” Employed as a valet at the British Embassy in Ankara in 1944, he is outwardly as proudly subservient as the best of British manservants, and inwardly as cool, clever and cynical as the best of British spies. Cicero actually sells the Germans the Allies' plans for the Normandy invasion, and it is only through an ironic twist that history takes the turn with which we are familiar. Mankiewicz adds to the story a romance between the suave spy and a Polish ex-countess (Danielle Darrieux). Their affair is played out in an arena of world-weary and corrupt diplomats, who know better than anyone the absurdities that are promoted by nations at war. Gordon Gow, writing in Hollywood in the Fifties, calls the film “a deft and satirical thriller,” while a recent Village Voice capsule review terms it “high-grade caviar...Mason's film all the way.”