One, Two, Three [Blu-ray]

Director: Billy Wilder Billy Wilder

Overview

In his last starring film (it was supposed to be his last film, but Ragtime came along in 1981), James Cagney plays Coca-Cola executive C.R. MacNamara. Assigned to manage Coke's West Berlin office, MacNamara dreams of being transferred to London, and to do this he must curry favor with his Atlanta-based boss, Hazeltine (Howard St. John). Thus, MacNamara agrees to look after Hazeltine's dizzy, impulsive daughter, Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin), during her visit to Germany. Weeks pass, and on the eve of Hazeltine's visit to West Berlin, Scarlett announces that she's gotten married. Even worse, her husband is a hygienically challenged East Berlin Communist named Otto Piffl (Horst Buchholz). The crafty MacNamara arranges for Piffl to be arrested by the East Berlin police and to have the marriage annulled, only to discover that Scarlett is pregnant. In rapid-fire "one, two, three" fashion, MacNamara must arrange for Piffl to be released by the Communists and successfully pass off the scrungy, doggedly anti-capitalist Piffl as an acceptable husband for Scarlett. MacNamara must accomplish this in less than 12 hours, all the while trying to mollify his wife (Arlene Francis), who has learned of his affair with busty secretary Ingeborg (Lilo Pulver). Seldom pausing for breath, Billy Wilder's film is a crackling, mile-a-minute farce, taking satiric scattershots at Coca-Cola, the Cold War (the film is set in the months just before the erection of the Berlin Wall), Russian red tape, Communist and capitalist hypocrisy, Southern bigotry, the German "war guilt," rock music, and even Cagney's own movie image. Not all the gags are in the best of taste, and most of the one-liners have dated rather badly, but Cagney's mesmerizing performance holds the whole affair together. Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond adapted their screenplay from an obscure play by Ferenc Moln?r. Watch for Red Buttons in an unbilled cameo as a military policeman, and listen for the voice of Sig Rumann, emanating from the mouth of actor Hubert Von Meyerinck (the Count von Droste-Schattenburg).

Product Details

Release Date:	05/30/2017
UPC:	0738329215606
Original Release:	1961
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:55:00
Sales rank:	23,439

Special Features

Audio Commentary by Film Historian Michael Schlesinger; Billy Wilder and Volker Schlondorff discussing One, Two, Three; Billy Wilder on Politics and One, Two, Three; Original Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

James Cagney	C.R. MacNamara
Pamela Tiffin	Scarlett Hazeltine
Horst Buchholz	Otto Ludwig Piffl
Arlene Francis	Phyllis MacNamara
Lilo Pulver	Ingeborg,Ingeborg
Howard St. John	Hazeltine
Hans Lothar	Schlemmer,Schlemmer
Lois Bolton	Mrs. Hazeltine,Melanie Hazeltine
Leon Askin	Peripetchikoff
Peter Capell	Mishkin
Ralf Wolter	Borodenko
Karl Lieffen	Fritz
Henning Schluter	Dr. Bauer
Red Buttons	Military Police Sergeant
John Allen	Tommy MacNamara,Cindy MacNamara
Hubert von Meyerinck	Count von Droste-Schattenburg
Til Kiwe	Newspaperman
Karl Ludwig Lindt	Zeidlitz
Rose Renee Roth	Bertha
Ivan Arnold	Military Police Corporal
Jacques Chevalier	Pierre
Helmut Schmid	East German Police Corporal
Otto Friebel	East German Interrogator
Werner Buttler	East German Police Sergeant
Klaus Becker	Policeman
Siegfried Dornbusch	Policeman
Max Buchsbaum	Tailor
Jasper von Oertzen	Haberdasher
Inga De Toro	Stewardess
Werner Hassenland	Shoeman
Abi von Hasse	Jeweler
Howard Johnson	Wendell P Hazeltine
Paul Bös	Krause
Josef Coesfeld	Hairdresser
Ingrid DeToro	Stewardess
Gernot Duda	Suitcase Salesman
John Banner	Haberdrasher / Krause
Helmut Schmidt	East German Police Corporal
I. A. L. Diamond	Actor
André Previn	Composer

Technical Credits

Billy Wilder

I.A.L. Diamond

Ferenc Molnár

Billy Wilder	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
I.A.L. Diamond	Screenwriter,Screenwriter,Producer
Milt Rice	Special Effects
Ferenc Molnár	Screenwriter
Basil Fenton-Smith	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Del Harris	Sound Effects
John Brommage	Sound Effects
Doane Harrison	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Adapted by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond from a Ferenc Molnar play, Wilder's rapid-fire comedy ferociously satirizes the Cold War divide between East and West. Featuring a peerless James Cagney in his last starring role and set in West Berlin, the breathless farce sends up everything from soft-drink capitalism to Communist hypocrisy, Soviet disorganization, male lechery, female giddiness, postwar Germany, and American pop culture. With a relentless stream of one-liners and numerous comic set pieces, such as a prisoner tortured with endless plays of "Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" and a mad tabletop striptease that shakes a portrait of Stalin off its perch, Wilder and Cagney never let up the pace for a moment, down to the final Pepsi Cola punch line. Earning critical accolades for its wit and its star, One, Two, Three received one Oscar nomination, for Daniel L. Fapp's crisp widescreen black-and-white photography. (Fapp won the color cinematography Oscar that same year, for West Side Story.) One, Two, Three became a popular hit in Germany after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.