For any film buff if you mention actor James Cagney's name, immediately you image gangster films or maybe Yankee Doodle Dandy. While it is true, he could play the tough or the song and dance man he had the ability to play comedic characters. (Who can forget his film-stealing role as the tyrannical Captain in Mister Roberts)?
One such comedic film that highlights his comedy talent, was Billy Wilder's ‘One, Two, Three’. Made in 1961, it shows us a 62-year-old Cagney still at the top of his game 30 years after he became a star.
Set in a post war Germany, the film is a fast, frantic, romantic, hilarious farce set against the non-too funny backdrop of the Cold War. Cagney plays MacNamara, a tough-talking Middle Management executive for Coca-Cola trying to secure the Coca-Cola rights on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. He hates Communists, hates Fascists, and loves his work. He is short tempered, sharp tongued and quick witted.
He has two women in his life his wife Phyllis and his yummy blonde and easily corruptible secretary Ingeborg. His organised yet double life is thrown into turmoil when his bosses’ 17 year old yet wild insatiable daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin) arrives with the bosses strict instructions to 'look after her'. Instead of staying for the intended two weeks, she stays for two months and appears to have successfully curtailed her wayward lifestyle, until one night she fails to return to the MacNamara home, frantic with worry for her safety and mostly for his job; he is desperate to find her.
His Driver finally admits that since her arrival in Germany she had been crossing over into East Germany every night has been visiting her boyfriend card-carrying communist called Otto (Horst Buchholz). Knowing that this will be the final nail in his Coca-Cola coffin if his boss ever finds out, MacNamara proceeds to concoct a plan to have Otto incarcerated in the East by having him arrested for being an American Spy.
MacNamara pleased with his handy work returns home to find out that Scarlett is ‘married’ and in the 'family way' with Otto's baby, now he must get Otto Back from the clutches of the East German forces, and pass him of as a blue-blooded, non commie capitalist entrepreneur.
The friction between Cagney and Buchholz on camera is brilliant. While all this is going on Cagney’s character as to deal with East German officials looking to do the Coca-Cola deal but they seem more interested in Ingeborg.
Red Buttons makes an early movie appearance as an American MP and steals his scene by doing an impersonation of Cagney circa 1931 right in the face of Cagney circa 1961, which even though his back is to camera you can tell Cagney is cracking up though forever the professional, he gathers his composure well enough to complete the scene.
There is also a blink-and-you'll-miss it in-joke where Cagney threatens to hurl a half grapefruit in Buchholz face in homage to the memorable scene he did 30 years before with Mae Clarke in The Public Enemy.
From the opening titles, the pace of this movie is set with the fast-paced. Cagney refuses to let the film slow down either from the moment he first appears on screen he shows more vitality and energy than the rest of the cast combined and still moves with the agility of someone half his age.
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| The Bride, The Commie, The Yankee |
I love this movie and is a perfect example of a sixties screwball sex-farce, typical Wilder, but a role a little different from Cagney was used to playing, but he rose to the challenge perfectly. It was to be another 20 years before Cagney made another Movie, but hell; he needed a long rest after giving it his all in this film.
In the time of remakes this film can never be remade as it is too racially and politically intolerant for today's politically correct audiences to digest with comfort, which doesn't really upset me as the performances is this movie could never be bettered. The film is on YouTube to be viewed
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