Synopsis
C.R. MacNamara is a managing director for Coca Cola in West Berlin during the Cold War, just before the Wall is put up. When Scarlett, the rebellious daughter of his boss, comes to West Berlin, MacNamara has to look after her, but this turns out to be a difficult task when she reveals to be married to a communist.
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Cast
- James CagneyC.R. MacNamara
- Liselotte PulverFräulein Ingeborg
- Horst BuchholzOtto Ludwig Piffl
- Pamela TiffinScarlett Hazeltine
- Howard St. JohnWendell P. Hazeltine
- Loïs BoltonMelanie Hazeltine
- Hanns LotharSchlemmer
- Karl LieffenFritz
- Arlene FrancisPhyllis MacNamara
- Leon AskinPeripetchikoff
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Tribune
Based on a one-act play by Ferenc Molnar, and scripted by Wilder and his frequent collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, One Two Three is all-Cagney all the time. [11 May 2001, p.C2] - 91
The A.V. Club
Although crafting a comedy about such world-altering topics was bound to be difficult, a master like Wilder could pull it off. - 80
Chicago Reader
The pace is blistering, and Wilder's deep-seated hatred of Germans has never been put to more comic use. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
This film begins at mach one and gets somewhere near the speed of light by the time it finishes. - 70
Variety
Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap. But total experience packs a considerable wallop. - 60
The New York Times
That's about the nature of the picture. It is one with which you can laugh--with its own impudence toward foreign crises--while laughing at its rowdy spinning jokes. - 60
Time Out
Marvellous one-liners, of course, and Cagney, spitting out his lines with machine-gun rapidity in his final film until his belated appearance in 'Ragtime', is superb (and superbly backed by a fine cast). But the targets of Wilder's satire - go-getting, up-to-the-minute, consumer America versus the poverty and outdatedness of Communist culture - are rather too obvious. - 50
The New Yorker
The gags are almost all on this level, and the little sops to sentiment are even worse.
