The city of Cairo features in this movie's title but was not a filming location during the production shoot and is only a minor setting in the movie.
The meaning and relevance of the film's title "Five Graves to Cairo" is that it refers to five buried fuel and supplies dumps (the secret location of which was identifiable from each letter of the word Egypt in a map of the same) which were secretly established prior to World War II to prepare for this Germany's invasion of Egypt.
The movie has a Chiaroscuro (literally, Italian for "light-dark") look i.e. a monochrome picture made by using several different shades of bold contrast of light and dark.
The name of the desert hotel in this movie was the "Empress of Britain Hotel". The name "Empress of Britain" has more frequently been associated as being a name of British Empire ships, specifically three Canadian Pacific Steamship Company transatlantic ocean liners which were all built in Scotland.
The North African desert in this movie was portrayed by the American sand dunes of Yuma, Arizona. Filming also took place at the Salton Sea and Camp Young, Indio, Riverside County, California where the battle sequence was staged with the assistance of the Army Ground Forces.
The Paramount Collection at the AMPAS Library states that the British Army's Major David P. J. Lloyd was appointed a consultant and technical adviser to the production, this being attributed to his "first hand experience and knowledge of desert tank warfare in Libya."
The production shoot of this movie went one week over schedule.
The tank seen at the start of the picture was an actual American army tank but not authentically a British one. It was loaned to the production by a neighboring American army base. The production had attempted to get a real British tank but had had their request knocked backed.
The town in the movie, Sidi Halfaya (where the hotel is situated), is not actually a real place in Egypt. There is a place called the Halfaya Pass (aka Hellfire Pass) in Egypt, which was a region which was involved in World War II's North African war. The village town Sidi Halfaya in this movie was actually a large set built at a location near the city of Indio in Riverside County, California.
This film was exhibited in the New York City Film Forum program "Von Stroheim" between June 25 - July 8, 1999 as well as the New York City Film Forum series "Billy Wilder: 85 Years an Enfant Terrible" between May 14 - 15, 1991.
This film's closing epilogue states: "On July first, 1942, Rommel and his Afrika Korps reached El Alamein - - - as far east as they ever got. On September seventh 1942, a new-made lieutenant bought a parasol at a little ship in Cairo. On October twenty-fourth 1942, to the skirl of a bagpipe, General Montgomery's Eighth Army launched its counter-offensive. And so, on November the twelfth, 1942, the British came back to Sidi Halfaya."
This film's opening prologue states: "In June 1942 things looked bleak indeed for the British Eighth Army. It was beaten, scattered, and in flight. Tobruk had fallen. The victorious Rommel and his Afrika Korps were pounding the British back and back toward Cairo and the Suez Canal."
This movie features low-key lighting, a photographic look associated with the popular 1940s 'film noir' genre.
This movie predominantly takes place in a fictitious village called Sidi Halfaya but the production originally wanted to set it in the town of Sidi Barani, an Egyptian town which was a location of actual Word War II combat. Sidi Barani was captured by Nazi German Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps in 1941 and then taken back by the British Army in 1942.
This movie utilized actual World War II combat footage from the Battle of El Alamein.
This movie utilizes Second World War story elements relating to the military campaign in World War II North Africa which were quite current and topical current affairs at the time and were only months old at the time of production and release.
This movie was made only a year after Billy Wilder's first American film, The Major and the Minor, a wartime comedy but not a war movie.
This was the third filmed adaptation of Lajos Biró's play "Hotel Imperial", made previously only four years earlier with Hotel Imperial and sixteen years prior with Hotel Imperial. An earlier film production of this play to be filmed as I Loved a Soldier was canceled. Hotel Sahara was not an adaption of this play.
Twentieth Century-Fox studio loaned actress Anne Baxter to Paramount Studios to play Mouche in this movie.