One, Two, Three
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: James CagneyBrand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-07-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of One, Two, Three
Movie Review: Anti-Commie Rant is Hysterical
Summary: 5 Stars
My favorite Billy Wilder film, it's a broad and hysterically funny satire about the cold war, set in Berlin right before the wall went up. In Wilder's world the young are almost always innocent and the old are corrupt (very corrupt). Here Wilder introduces a naive young Communist and an even more naive Southern girl from Atlanta who fall in love and get married. Wilder's belief is that the young have their illusions, while older people are more realistic, and more decadent. His anti-hero, James Cagney, is adulterous, greedy and manipulative. Working as a Coca-cola executive in West Berlin, Cagney has former Nazis on his payroll while trying to sell his classic American soda to all those thirsty Commies. (He's astounded when he finds out Atlanta doesn't want to sell Coke to the Commies. But what about all that profit?!). Cagney has political beliefs. Nazis suck, Communists suck. But he's willing to deal with anybody.
Cagney is forced to baby-sit the boss's daughter, which turns into a potential disaster when she gets married faster than you can say "where're my grits?" Not just married but brainwashed like Patty Hearst, spouting Marxist dialog that's guaranteed to get Cagney fired. Cagney has her Marxist fiancé deported to East Berlin, finds out she's pregnant and kidnaps him back. And then Cagney transforms this Marxist into a human Potemkin village. He buys the Commie a title and dresses him up in the finest clothes, all to impress the in-laws, who are flying in from Atlanta any minute now. This climactic scene is a one-man show for Cagney. He runs around like a force of capitalism, throwing money at every problem. ("Six of those, four of those, none of those, wrong color, wrong size, bring me more more more!"). It's hysterically funny. Cagney's performance is on fire. It is the fastest, most insane dialog I've ever heard. Faster than that Canadian rapper Snow singing "Informer." Faster than Bare Naked Ladies. Faster than anything. I dare you to try to keep up.
This movie is an ode to the capitalist spirit, its optimism, its energy, and its willingness to prostitute itself. Wilder sees capitalism as decadent, yes, but honest and human. In a way, this movie is like a sequel to Ninotchka. Wilder co-wrote that film in 1939, and the three Communists in this movie are like older, more corrupt versions of the three Communists from that earlier movie. Yet unlike Ninotchka, there is no romance here, or rather romance is introduced only to be promptly skewered. One, Two, Three is a brutal and viciously funny satire of dreamy utopia, whether your plan is economic or romantic. Amazing film, and an amazing performance by Cagney. (He was so exhausted by Wilder's demands--pages and pages of dialog, spouted out at six words a second--that he refuses to act in anything for two decades after this movie).
My Absolutely Insane Attempt To Rank All Cinema
Summary of One, Two, Three
James Cagney "gives one of the richest funniest most breathlessly paced performances of his career" (The New York Times) in this Billy Wilder comedy that defrosts the Cold War with gales of laughter!C.R. MacNamara (Cagney) a top-ranking executive stationed in West Berlin is charged with the care of his boss' visiting daughter. But when he learns that she's gone and married a fierce young communist - and that his boss will be arriving in town in 24 hours - Mac must transform the unwilling beatnik into a suitable son-in-law or risk losing his chance for advancement! Before you can say "one two three" his plans have spun out of control and into an international incident that could infuriate the Russians the Germans and worst of all his own suspicious wife (Arlene Francis)!System Requirements:Starring: Horst Buchholz James Cagney Arlene Francis Hanns Lothar Lilo Pulver Howard St. John Pamela Tiffin Directed By: Billy Wilder Running Time: 109 Min. Color Copyright 2003 MGM Studios.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 027616887634 Manufacturer No: 1004723Hardly 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 Molnįr, 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
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