One, Two, Three

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Template:Infobox Film This article is about the movie. An alternate meaning is One, Two, Three (word game)

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 in 1962, including the Laurel Awards' "Top Comedy".

The film is set in Berlin during the Cold War, and politics is predominant in the setup. What sets the film apart from a "typical" American movie is that Wilder's social satire and sharp humor skewers targets on both sides of the divide - capitalists and communists, Americans, Germans and Russians 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.

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.

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. Scarlet, 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, 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"). As 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, Otto, and having him picked up by the Stasi, the East German secret police.

Under pressure from his stern and disapproving wife, and realizing that his plan won't actually solve anything, 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.

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