One, Two, Three (1961)

Why so much hype?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

. . . from the 1900s. Not content with merely filling his script with then-contemporary references to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hollywood starlet-turned-Princess Grace Kelly, Nikita Kruschev's shoe-pounding at the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, the advent of the Berlin Wall, the likelihood of Russians landing the first people on the Moon, Sputnik, shoddy Communist consumer goods, Pan American Airlines, periodic Soviet leadership purges, Nazi war criminals in hiding, "German efficiency," and European nobles serving as men's room attendants, writer\director Billy Wilder has James Cagney quote Edward G. Robinson's final line from LITTLE CAESAR, and he also has Cagney sort of reprise his own infamous grapefruit-to-the-face move from PUBLIC ENEMY (both gangster films from the early 1930s). Therefore, anyone born later than former U.S. Veep Dick Cheney's Loser Generation (that is, the cohort which failed to produce a single American President) will find ONE, TWO, THREE a time capsule of ancient humor, not unlike a classic Greek satire or a Shakespeare comedy. So if YOU were born after 1945, don't watch ONE, TWO, THREE without some sort of Cliff's Notes!

Comedy about Coca-Cola's man (James Cagney) in West Berlin, who may be fired if he can't keep his American boss's daughter from marrying a Communist.This is Billy Wilder's finest work, and considering that I think pretty much everything he touches is gold, this is high praise. The humor, the action, this is just a great film from beginning to end. Cagney apparently hated working on this one, but I would also say it is one of his best roles, as well.What strikes me is the use of puns and fast-paced action (not quite slapstick, but close). Some jokes are hard to catch because they go so fast, and many are just downright clever. I was hooked as soon as they let loose with the ten-foot pole joke. I did not know they even made movies like this since the Marx Brothers stopped, and I cannot say they have done anything like this ever again.

It was sixteen years after World War 11 ended when this film was made. It was a time of the Cold War and the wall being built between East and West Germany.That being said, James Cagney turned in still another fine performance as a soda executive caught up with a wife wanting to come back to the U.S. and a boss who has had his teenage daughter running throughout Europe and now she is set to come to a divided Germany.Cagney's timing and the pacing of the film are in fine form. I didn't appreciate his wife referring to him on occasion as "Mein Fuehrer." That really isn't funny and should have been avoided.This is great satire on the corporate world and the cold war.

Saw a really bizarre film yesterday, called One, Two, Three.Now considering it was written by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder what would we expect of this? It is a total farce, and 49 years later much of the contemporary references and humour seem as funny as a slap in the face with a wet fish. I was watching the film on a Saturday afternoon while doing something else, and it followed The Three Stooges Meet Hercules made the following year and at times it was hard to tell the difference, The film appears to treat all sides with the same vicious satire. East German Police are rude and suspicious and frame their own citizens as spies. The trade delegation from the Soviet Union are more interested in acquiring the main character's secretary than anything else. The main character - MacNamara as played by James Cagney - is a blatant capitalist who employs ex-Nazis and is willing to use deception to get what he wants. In fact when I was watching this, I kept thinking that it should have stared Cary Grant in this screwball comedy. Almost every character in the film is a caricature : MacNamara is the company man who who do anything to save his job; Otto Piffl (played by Horst Bucholz) is the arch communist spouting propaganda that gets transformed into a fake aristocrat.But does it work? A lot of the film seems awfully flat, whereas some scenes are still funny. I thought the chase scene (in the video segment above) was an overdone comment on East German Cars. Very hit and miss, this film