SnoopyStyle C.R. 'Mac' MacNamara (James Cagney) is a Coca-Cola exec in charge of the West Berlin operations. Tension is rising across the Iron Curtain. It's a little over a year before the start of the Berlin Wall. He's trying to introduce Coke to the East. The communists want the secret formula. There is his sexy secretary Fräulein Ingeborg. His wife wants a quiet life in Atlanta. His boss dismisses expanding into Russia and asks Mac to care for his clueless party-girl daughter Scarlett Hazeltine.The talk is fast-paced. The humor is broad and full of Wilder wordplay. Cagney is an unrelenting engine. He is buzzing with energy and I half-expected him to explode in song and dance. The machine gun dialog is non-stop and can get tiring at some point. This is a feat of performance from the great Cagney.

gavin6942 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.

writers_reign I've just read the first half dozen or so reviews of this gem on IMDb of which every one is a rave and I can only endorse these sentiments. Not that it is surprising to find a movie co-written and directed by Billy Wilder to be anything less than outstanding. This was the second time he had satirized Germany in a movie set in Berlin, the first, of course, the equally unforgettable 'A Foreign Affair', also shot on location and there's a fetching symmetry between the two; in 1947 Berlin was largely rubble in the wake of World War Two and in 1961 the rubble was still in evidence every time the characters cross from West to East Berlin. In a script spilling over with brilliant moments Wilder throws in several referential moments, an uncredited Red Buttons does a Cagney impression right to Cagney's character, Cagney emulates his classic 'grapefruit in the kisser' scene not to Mae Clark (who got the full benefit in 'Public Enemy') but to Horst Bucholtz (who, by all accounts, deserved much more), Cagney's character parodies a fellow Warner Bros actor, Eddie Robinson, in the line 'Mother of God, is this the end of Rico' (from 'Little Caesar'), when Cagney and Lilo Pulver enter the hotel in East Berlin the band leader is Frederich Hollander (who wrote 'Falling In Love Again' and 'See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have', both associated with Marlene Dietrich, one of the stars of 'A Foreign Affair') and they are playing 'Yes, We Have No Bananas', which Wilder had featured in his 'Sabrina' in 1954, and so on. Like a lot of Wilder movies the source was an obscure (in the West) play by Hungarian Ferenc Molnar - author of 'Liliom' which Rodgers and Hammerstein turned into 'Carousel' - though the chances are Wilder and Izzy Diamond reworked it considerably. The plot has been detailed in other reviews so suffice it to say that Cagney is superb, Arlene Francis a nose in front of the rest of a brilliant cast. One, two, three, four, FIVE stars.

blanche-2 James Cagney was pretty much retired when Billy Wilder lured him away from his farm to do "One, Two, Three," a witty, fast-moving comedy from 1961. And what a credit to Cagney - rapid dialogue and plenty of it, taxing to memorize probably for a man half his age.The story concerns an American Coca-Cola executive, C.R. McNamara, heading up an office in Berlin who is asked by his boss to host his daughter (Pamela Tiffin). Hoping for a plum assignment in London, C.R. and his wife (Arlene Francis) welcome the young woman with open arms. She's southern, beautiful, flirtatious, and before they know it, she's got a Communist boyfriend (Horst Bucholz) Then he becomes her Communist husband, and that London promotion is looking less and less likely unless C.R. can pull off a miracle.Wilder's direction for this was to have the dialogue shouted rather than spoken and to keep the film moving at a very fast pace. Admittedly this can get a little exhausting. Cagney gives a high-voltage performance and is extremely funny as the harried executive. And there are some hysterical bits as well as the madcap feeling of a '30s film. The rest of the cast is wonderful: Arlene Francis as C.R.'s long-suffering wife, Lilo Pulver as C.R.'s sexy secretary, and Hanns Lothar as Schlemmer, C.R.'s assistant who was "underground" during the war. ("The resistance?" "No, the subway. Nobody told me anything down there.") Though this was not a happy set - Wilder and Cagney had their differences, and Horst Buccholz was a major pain - the result is very good. Late in their careers, Wilder and Cagney still had it. Big time.