One, Two, Three (1961)

(YouTube Streaming, July 2020) The legendary Billy Wilder wrote and directed so many great films that it’s easy to forget about even his second-tier efforts, and so it took me a curiously long time to get to watch One, Two, Three. A comedy set in Berlin that heavily plays with the Cold War obsessions of the time, it also lets James Cagney have one of his last roles be a comic showpiece as a Coca-Cola executive dealing with Soviet contacts and the flighty daughter of an influential superior. As usual for Wilder movie, the screenwriting is front and centre, with Cagney spitting dialogue at a blistering pace as a fast-thinking professional used to get his way even under adverse circumstances. The comedy gets crazier and crazier, picking elements from Wilder’s own Ninotchka and bringing them forward to a newly-fractured Berlin stuck between communists and capitalists. One, Two, Three is very much a fascinating time capsule of its era, because it seems able to laugh contemporarily about things that you think would have been best dealt with retrospectively as a period piece. The film does get funnier as it goes on, and Cagney keeps his maniac pacing from beginning to end. There’s quite a bit of mordant cynical humour from Wilder’s pen, but it all leads to a nice wrap-up. For Wilder, One, Two, Three will always be overshadowed by a filmography that includes classics such as Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot, but it’s a very enjoyable film nonetheless.