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Product Details
Hardly ever mentioned in the category of lightning-paced comedies--the His Girl Friday and Preston Sturges kind--is this breathless cold war farce from the great Billy Wilder. Adapted from a one-act play by Ferenc Molnár, Wilder and collaborator I.A.L. Diamond's hilarious screenplay is a whirlwind collection of one-liners, gags, and double-entendres, anchored for the cameras by Jimmy Cagney's cagey and frenetic performance (one of his best), and, under Wilder's direction, executed with diamond-like precision. The gangster-movie icon plays a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin (the film's 1961 release put it squarely in the middle of the world's laserlike focus on East vs. West tensions) who has parlayed expanding American consumerism into a chance to break through the Iron Curtain and sell "the pause that refreshes" to thirsty comrades. But when his Atlanta boss's visiting 17-year-old daughter (Pamela Tiffin), a boy-crazy Southern tornado, reveals that she has secretly married an American-hating German Commie (Horst Buchholz), Cagney's big-American-fish-in-a-European-pond lifestyle is threatened, especially once Daddy hops a plane to Germany. As the plot accelerates, the lines literally spit out of the cast's mouths--the title refers to Cagney's character's rapid-fire rattling off of lists of tasks--and Wilder's penchant for urbane nastiness is perfectly measured by the order of the whole crazy circus. This movie takes gleeful potshots at both sides of a conflict that terrified audiences in its day, but has aged beautifully to become a fascinating time capsule, an exhilarating litany of zingers and a potent blueprint for razor-sharp political satire. Cagney would retire after this movie for 20 years (returning for 1981's Ragtime), and it's hardly any wonder: he has the energy of 10 performances in this one film. --Robert Abele
Product Reviews
 (4 stars) - Billy Wilder's Amazing Rapid-Fire Comedy
Our setting is West Berlin, Germany, just after the Second World War where James Cagney plays C.R. MacNamara, a Coca-Cola executive assigned to look after his boss's daughter Scarlett Hazeltine (Pamela Tiffin) while her parents are away vacationing in Europe. As the story progresses Scarlett falls in love with an East German Communist named Otto Piffl, played by Horst Buchholz. When MacNamara finds out that the underaged Scarlett is engaged to be married all hell breaks loose as he (with the help of his assistant Schlemmer) hastly undertakes the task of transforming Piffl into a respectable, presentable, and noble husband when Mr. and Mrs. Hazeltine arrive back to greet their daughter.
MacNamara's trouble doesn't end there, however. Phyllis MacNamara (Arlene Francis) is unhappy with her life in Berlin, and for the sake of their children she pleads with her husband to take back his old position in Atlanta and return to live in the United States. He refuses and she threatens to leave him.
Billy Wilder directs this fast-paced comedy with sheer brilliance it will leave your head spinning. The cast here is top-notch and James Cagney is non-stop hilarious. For a film that has at least a chuckle a minute it is nowhere to be found on AFI's Top 100 Laughs. Fans of Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday" should enjoy and appreciate this highly underrated farcical gem.
 (5 stars) - Berlin Express
One, Two, Three doesn't suffer from the overfamiliarity of th betterknown Wilder pictures like The Apartment, Some Like It Hit, Sunset Boulevard. In fact it plays as though it were made yesterday. One marvels at how fast the characters reel off realms of complicated dialogue: I got worried when Cagney has to bark out an endless list of multipart orders over the phone to a series of heelclicking Berlin underlings--worried for him, for it looked like he was going to have an heart attack. The energy's contagious, even when the political satire, like all satire, cuts the wrong way. There must be reams and reams of film criticism comparing this 1961 picture to Wilder's earlier A Foreign Affair, for both of them carry something of the cynical weariness, mixed with nervous triumph, that an exiled artist carries back when he or she returns to native climes.
In fact the sex roles are distributed fairly evenly as they were in A Foreign Affair. Here, Arlene Francis tweaks the Jean Arthur role of the chilly, sexless, officious and yet witty American woman overseas and longing to return to the place she knows best, while Lilo Pulver plays the Marlene Dietrich part--really better than Dietrich, if that isn't heretical, the sexy, amiable, out for herself German party girl. One, Two, Three adds another female role to the mix--maybe that's where the title comes from! And she's Pamela Tiffin, in one of her oddest parts ever, a teenage Scarlett O'Hara--her name is even Scarlett--who falls in love with an East German socialist played by Horst Buchholz. I'm Tiffin's biggest fan and even I would have to say she's testing my devotion here with her breathless oohs and aahs and her flaunting or US privilege. But I'll watch it ten more times, and my opinion with change I'm sure.
As for Horst Buchholz, I'm glad Cagney didn't get him fired. The movie would be nothing without him at the center. My goodness, is he ever luscious in his proletariat costume, barely distinguishable from the Beat look, his sandals, bare feet, sweatshirt, hoodie, and that long hair like a double handful of wet crow's feathers nearly covering his soulful James Dean eyes. They called him the German James Dean, but prolonged exposure to his sulky stare here will have you thinking of James Dean as the "Ämerican Horst Buchholz." Cagney's apoplectic that Otto wears no socks, and Pamela Tiffin's all lasciviously pointing out that he wears no underwear either. Then in a patented turnaround he is forced to spend most of the film's second half sauntering around in a pair of white silk boxers that fit him like the skin of a balloon. Ow, that hurts! He vows that he will never be a capitalist, "and sit on my assets clipping coupons." I wonder if experienced film buffs can tell me whether or not this is the first use of the "sit on my assets" joke in American cinema? It would have to be Wilder, wouldn't it, who else would be brash enough and crude enough and attuned enough to the intricacies of the American language?
(5 stars) - Funniest movie ever.
Greate cast, including unexpected early career actors. The last hour is non stop hilarity.
(5 stars) - A capstone to a career as one of America's greatest actors
If anyone needed more convincing that James Cagney is one of America's greatest actors, then this last movie before retirement should seal the deal. Talk about going out on top. A typical Billy Wilder comedy that shines a light on our prejudices and hypocrisies. Thank you Billy Wilder and James Cagney for making the world a more enjoyable place to be.
(5 stars) - Great flick!
We watched this movie recently while in Berlin visiting friends. Neither of us had ever heard of it, but we just loved it. It is marvelously tongue in cheek. The humor has great subtlety. Overall, it is very well done and highly enjoyable. One of the first things we did upon returning home to the USA was to buy this movie. Great flick!
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