To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of ONE, TWO, THREE before I saw the trailer on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOiDKpNqOE4&feature=user) for its airing on Reel 13 this past Saturday. It’s easy to see, though, how the film got lost in the shuffle of time in spite of its big names (James Cagney and Billy Wilder). Its broad comedy style feels very dated and probably foreign to most modern audiences. Similarly, its political references to Cold War issues and sentiments (How many do you think got the reference when one of the Russian characters started to bang his shoe on a table?), which feature prominently in the plot, don’t have the resonance they would have had back then.
The film takes place in 1961, the year of its release, and features James Cagney as the head of the Germany branch of Coca-Cola. The plot starts to unfold when his boss – the CEO of Coke – asks Cagney to look after his daughter during her trip to Berlin. The daughter (Pamela Tiffin) is an unruly (and dim) Southern belle who gets herself into trouble when she gets involved with a Communist from the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. And it’s up to the resourceful Cagney to bail her out (in order to save his own job).
The deft hand of Wilder counterbalances the potential corniness of the plot. In the world he creates, most of the events that transpire seem plausible, in spite of some of the conveniences. It all fits within the style. I only wish some of the supporting characters were a little more drawn out. Tiffin doesn’t have much to work with at all, which is problematic, because the daughter character is the catalyst. Her Communist lover is a little more three-dimensional on the page, but is unfortunately played by Horst Buchholz, who is as equally bad here as he was in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. It’s Cagney, though, that is the real engine of the film. His machine gun delivery is in perfect alignment with the verbose and fast-paced screenplay. His energy and presence are the foundation for all the things that make the film work.
At times, the film feels like a sitcom. Some of the wacky plot coincidences are something you might see on THREE’S COMPANY or SEINFELD. It also reminded me of some other Wilder films like THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and THE FORTUNE COOKIE in the sense that they never seem to be able to escape their theatricality - One, Two, Three was based on a play and I imagine it would be riotous on stage. On screen, though, about a quarter of the jokes fall flat because successful comedy films move at a different rhythm that they do in theater. Another quarter of the jokes are dead air because they are references to things that are lost on modern audiences.
The remaining half, however, work anywhere anytime and most of the belly laughs in the film, in true keeping with the tradition of farce, come in the zany final act. For most of the film, I felt detached, bored and a little put off by the silliness of the style and the borderline offensive xenophobia (the film is plays up on archaic stereotypes of both Russians and Germans). In the last thirty minutes, however, Comedy General Cagney leads his troops in a race against the clock where all kinds of mayhem ensues. Several storylines intersect with each other and work toward satisfying resolution with breakneck speed. It takes ONE, TWO, THREE about an hour to really get moving, which is probably way too long, but given there are moments of the film that still make me laugh days later, I almost wonder if it wasn’t worth the wait.