In 1959, Billy Wilder painted the Mona Lisa of screwball comedy with "Some Like it Hot". He outdid himself again in 1960 with "The Apartment", a witty romantic comedy and sharp satire against office mentalities and lust-driven careerism, the film took home the Best Picture Oscar. If all good things went in three, the appropriately titled "One, Two, Three", third comedy in a consecutive year, from the Wilder-Diamond partnership should have been a masterpiece. In fact, it has the more modestly-designed set of a little dessert, after two copious meals.
But for a dessert, it's still 'rich' enough to be enjoyed with its machine-gun dialogues worthy of Hawks and Cukor' classics that makes you wonder if you didn't accidentally fast-forward the film at 1.5 speed. And there is such vaudevillian streak of incongruous events and improbable coincidence that it provides the right canvas for safe hilarity, in other words so many things happen in the film that even the lousiest gag doesn't have time to fall flat, another comes at the rescue. And as Coca-Cola executive McNamara, James Cagney delivers a painstakingly energetic performance that exhausted him so much he retired from acting for 20 years until his cameo in "Ragtime", that's how demanding his role was... and you can feel it in the screen.
Cagney didn't get along with Horst Bucholz who plays Otto the young idealist communist who marries the Coca Cola's top man's daughter (Pamela Tiffin) and wished he could kick his ass to calm down his scene-stealing impulses. These incidences reminded me of Fonda not getting along with Ford during the shooting of "Mister Roberts", starring Cagney as well, but that didn't affect the film since it's all meant to be a big joke and in the scenery-chewing contest, Cagney and Bucholz are equally hammy and funny if you look at the film with indulgent eyes. Maybe Cagney was too old and Jack Lemmon would have been a more fitting choice as a middle-aged executive in one of the most emblematic American brands. We'll never know.
The real problem in "One, Two, Three" is that it starts brilliantly, the whole first act where we see "Mac" handling Germans' manners and double-edged efficiency draws a pattern of cultural clashes' gags that found an echo in both the Cold War context and the difference of mentalities between America and the European world, as if there was a second curtain behind the infamous iron one (though much lighter). But even if if the non-existence of the Berlin wall (only mentioned at the beginning) dates the film, made ironically the exact year of its building, the film also managed to be ahead of its time prophesizing the missiles crisis with a Russian executive saying about Cuban, "they give us cigars, we give them missiles".
The dialogues with the Soviet representatives are nothing short of brilliant writing, reminding us of the wit that Wilder displayed when he wrote "Ninothcka", a film whose comedic efficiency also depend on a funny Soviet trio. The comment about the Swiss cheese being rejected because it had holes had me in tears, to name that one. The plot thickens to the point of convolution when it adds the romantic subplot but it makes up for the blandness of the two lovers (no matter how colorful they're made to be) when it adds another dimension of cultural shift between Southerners and Yankees, the flimsy Southern belle didn't realize the political meaning of "Yankee, go home" slogan nor what a house "with a short walk to the bathroom" implied.
But the best asset the film has to offer is its slice of life from both sides of the Iron curtain or the soon-to-be Berlin wall. For all the antagonism directed against US capitalism, there might be one thing no one can resist which is a bottle of Coca-Cola, the brand that perhaps sold the American dream more than any political operation. So watching Cagney playing diplomacy with the Russian provided the film's best moments culminating with that unforgettable Sabre Dance and barefeet Fraulein Ingebörg frenetically shaking her voluptuous body on a restaurant table in front of executives getting an exciting taste of the Western dream. That musical sequence might be one of my favorite from any Wilder films and it's crucially set at mid-point just when the plot started to drag.
As I said, Horst Bucholz was hammy only to the degree that it was the only possible way to go the distance with Cagney and I enjoyed watching the lovable Arlene Francis playing his resigned but not discouraged wife. Yet the film is so busy providing one liners right after another that it takes the safe side and injects lousy wedding-and-divorce segments where so much could have been done in the area of politics. But maybe Wilder was getting too old-fashioned leaving sharper tones to a certain Cold-War comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick, interestingly a movie that also pays a tribute to Coca Cola through one of its most memorable scenes. That level of wit is missing in the film already dated by its own context. One thing to its defense though, it offers the perfect response to Joan Crawford's complain of product placement and the perfect punchline with Pepsi Cola having the last word.
And to give a last word, if the film isn't in the same league that "Some Like it Hot" and "The Apartment" and marks the decline of Wilder's prestige and awards pretensions, it still works and maybe it does so because somewhere I could feel it didn't pretend to be anything but a farce and comedy of manners with the Cold War as the backdrop. A "Dr. Strangelove" it isn't but either you don't find it funny or you do. I did find it funny many times and brilliant in a few scenes.
