One, Two, Three

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One, Two, Three

Directed by	Billy Wilder
Produced by	Billy Wilder
Written by	I.A.L. Diamond
Starring	James Cagney Horst Buchholz Pamela Tiffin Arlene Francis Howard St. John Liselotte Pulver Ralf Wolter Karl Lieffen Hanns Lothar Leon Askin
Music by	André Previn
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	December 15, 1961
Running time	115 min.
Language	English German Russian
IMDb profile

One, Two, Three is a 1961 comedy directed by Billy Wilder, written by I.A.L. Diamond and starring James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, and Howard St. John. It was nominated for four awards^{[citation needed]} in 1962, including the Laurel Awards' "Top Comedy".

The film is set in Berlin during the Cold War, before the building of the Berlin Wall, and politics is predominant in the setup. Wilder's social satire and sharp humor skewers targets on all sides of the divide — capitalists and communists, Americans, Germans, and Russians, men and women alike exhibit their own weaknesses and quirky foibles. As in Avanti! (1972), the humour of the movie is partly based on the contrast between people from different cultures.

1 Plot
2 Homages, references and trivia
3 Title in other languages
4 External link

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

C. R. "Mac" Macnamara is a high-ranking executive in the Coca-Cola corporation, assigned to West Berlin after a business fiasco a few years earlier (about which he is still bitter). After an arrangement to bring Coke across the Iron Curtain, Mac receives a call from his boss. Scarlett, the boss's hot-blooded 17-year-old daughter is coming to Berlin, and Mac receives the unenviable task of taking care of this young whirlwind.

An expected two-week stay develops into two months, and Mac discovers just why Scarlet is enamored of Berlin. She surprises him by announcing that she's married to a young man, Otto, who happens to be an East German Communist. The happy socialist couple are bound for Russia to make a new life for themselves. ("They've assigned us a magnificent apartment, just a short walk from the bathroom!") Since Mac's boss is coming to check up on his daughter the very next day, this is obviously a disaster of monumental proportions, and he deals with it as any good capitalist would — by framing the young Communist firebrand and having him picked up by the Stasi, the East German secret police.

Under pressure from his stern and disapproving wife (and the this-changes-everything knowledge that Scarlett is pregnant), Mac sets out to bring Otto back with the help of his Russian business associates. With the boss on the way, he finds that his only chance is to turn the fierce young man into a son-in-law in good standing — which means, among other things, making him a capitalist. The last act of the film is a frenzy of effort, and Cagney's energetic performance must be seen to be believed, to the tune of Khachaturian's lively "Sabre Dance".

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Homages, references and trivia

The movie makes several references to Cagney's earlier films, including a Cagney impression from Red Buttons, and the "grapefruit to the face" incident in The Public Enemy. Cagney also refers to his contemporary Edward G. Robinson by using his "Mother of Mercy, is this the end of little Rico?" line from Little Caesar.
This was Cagney's last movie before he came out of retirement years later to appear in Ragtime.
Cagney's characther is named MacNamara, as a reference to the then Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara.
The boss' daughter is named Scarlett, just like Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind. The Coca-Cola company is headquartered in Atlanta, close to that book's fictional Tara.
The three Soviet commercial representatives are a nod to a trio of Soviets in Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka. Lubitsch was a mentor to Billy Wilder.
Many events of the Cold War are mentioned such as the Berlin Airlift, the Space Race, the Berlin Wall (which was actually erected during the shooting of the movie) and even forecasts the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Cagney's male (and former SS) assistant crossdresses to deceive the Soviets, but gets men interested in him, just like Jack Lemmon in Wilder's Some Like it Hot.
Joan Crawford, who was on the Board of Directors of Pepsi Cola at the time, contacted Wilder to protest the utilization of Coca-Cola in the film. To placate Crawford, Wilder added a scene where Cagney comes across a Coca-Cola vending machine, which delivers a Pepsi to Cagney.