Rent One, Two, Three (1961)

Secret Formulas - One, Two, Three review by CH

Graham Greene consistently praised James Cagney as “one of the most reliable actors on the screen; his vigour, speed and humour are just as apparent in The Irish in Us, a film to discourage a less hard-working and conscientious actor, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream”. Come The Sequel to Second Bureau, he lauded “the lightweight hands held a little away from the body ready for someone else's punch: the quick nervous step of a man whose footwork is good: the extreme virtuosity of the muted sentiment”. And in The Oklahoma Kid there is “nothing Mr. Cagney can do which is not worth watching. On his light hoofer's feet, with his quick nervous hands and his magnificent unconsciousness of the camera, he can pluck distinction out of the least promising part – and this part has plenty of meat”.

Again, of Each Dawn I Die, Greene lighted upon that nervous quality, and it is writ foot-tappingly large in the very title of Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), a two-hour film carried by Cagney's increasingly manic performance as a harrassed Coca-Cola executive who has holed up in the West Berlin office while harbouring hopes of the plum London job.

Adapted, very loosely and yet tightly, by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond from a Molnar play of three decades earlier (and with a dash of Wilder's own 1939 screenplay for Ninotchka), here is another instance of life catching up with art. While Wilder was directing it in Berlin - Brandenburg Gate and all - the Wall sprang up suddenly and some scenes then had to be shot in Munich. Could word of this film-in-progress have brought orders from Moscow to erect that concrete hulk?

Cagney has his eye on the Russian market, negotiations begin with three stooges redolent of those in Ninotchka while he contends with German staff who insist upon clicking their heels at every turn while the deskbound staff rise to their feet at his every entrance. This is office life rather different from that of The Apartment, although there is a winningly-done affair with a secretary (the fetchingly comic Liselotte Pulver) while his wife (Arlene Francis who blends politeness with well-judged jaundice) hankers for the family's return to suburban Arkansas.

With material enough already for a farce which verges on the screwball, it goes up several notches when the family is asked by the company's Chairman to look after his teenage daughter (Pamela Tiffin) who has been sent on a European tour after striking up four engagements within a few months - and proves to rank midnight encounters higher than, well, tiffin.

Wilder and Diamond wanted to make the fastest-paced film ever. Laugh at one joke, and you might miss the next one as the bizarre logic of it all traverses the borders of a divided city. Coca-Cola appears to have acquiesed in the use of their name as an emblem of corporate ambition and internal tyranny – trumped by the publishers of “Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Polka-Dot Bikini” sanctioning the repeated use of that disc by Communist police to break down the spirit of one of their own whom they take to be a spy (one suspects that André Previn, who adapts classical music throughout, did not have a hand in that).

Difficult to pluck lines from it out of context; one reinforces the other while there are visual gags galore (with an interesting emphasis upon balloons and an adroit instance of table-dancing with flares which a violinist does his best to ignore). Cagney's footwork is again good (and be sure not to miss him in Yankee Doodle Dandy, a title echoed many times by the office wall's cuckoo clock, which becomes a significant part in the plot's twist).

In these long months when the world's borders have presented other challenges, here is diversion which has one hooting in delight. One wonders whether Graham Greene, with his well-known wariness of America, saw it. Cagney would again have won him over.

Exhausting Farce. - One, Two, Three review by Steve

Stale political farce set in the divided city of Berlin just before the wall went up. Maybe the jokes were fresh when the film was produced but the premise of a beautiful American capitalist (Pamela Tiffin) falling in love with a Communist (Horst Buchholz) certainly wasn't. And there are scenes which lack taste that might be overlooked in a better film, but here land with a thud.

Apart from a dull script stuffed with predictable jokes and dated taunts at the expense of the Germans, the major problem is with the cast. Tiffin and Buchholz are lookers, but neither is even comfortable on camera. And sadly Cagney is unable to bring any charm or nuance to his role as a big business wheeler-dealer. He does reprise some famous dialogue from the thirties though.

The best performances are by the Germans. There's Hanns Lother as Cagney's obliging, obsequious go-fer and Liselotte Pulver as the executive's ditsy rainy day squeeze. Hubert von Meyerinck playing a former aristocrat reduced in circumstances since the war gets the most laughs in a five minute cameo, as he riffs on Emil Jannings' in The Last Laugh (1924).

Wilder gets the whole bundle up on its feet for the frantic finale, but the film is a disappointment. At least Wilder soft pedals the propaganda. He sends up corporate capitalism at least as much as Communism. The black and white photography is attractive and Andre Previn's energetic score is effective. But for a director of Wilder's reputation, it's ordinary. Maybe one for cold war nostalgics.