One, two, three is a comedy movie by Billy Wilder from 1961.
It's set in West Berlin shortly before the wall was built, it's about James
Cagney as the boss of Coca-Cola Germany who has to care for the daughter of his
boss spending her holiday there. And trying to do business with some
Communists, to expand Coca-Cola beyond the Iron Curtain. And preventing his
marriage to fall apart. Hilarity Ensues (lots of!).
Examples:
1. Actor Allusion: Red Buttons appears
as an MP who does a "You dirty rat" impression to the face of CR
MacNamara... played by James Cagney.
2. Cagney holds up a piece of fruit so
it looks like his famous "grapefruit" scene from The Public Enemy.
3. The Alleged Car: The Soviet agents'
Moskvitch 407.
4. -"Is exact replica of 1937
Nash!"*
5. All Germans Are Nazis: Played with.
MacNamara has a former S.S. member as his assistant; one scene shows his
employees acting like complete robots when issued orders.
6. This comes in handy when Schlemmer
gives away that the investigative reporter who threatens to expose the whole
deal is a former SS officer.
7. All Girls Want Bad Boys: And during
Cold War, no one was worse than a Commie.
8. Bait and Switch: The very movie
starts with it. James Cagney starts talking how the world was looking to
Washington, D.C. on August the 13th of 1961... for a sports game. Oh, BTW, on
the same day the Commies built The Berlin Wall.
9. Clumsy Copyright Censorship:
Completely and utterly averted. Joan Crawford, at the time a major stockholder
of Pepsi, was enraged by what she saw as blatant product placement. In
response, the very last gag in the film involves Pepsi — MacNamara puts a
nickle in a Coke machine at Templehof and is rather annoyed that he receives...
a bottle of Pepsi.
10. Comically Missing the Point:
11. Peripetchikoff: "We have
emergency meeting with Swiss Trade Delegation. They send us twenty car-loads of
cheese. Totally unacceptable... full of holes."
12. Cool and Unusual Punishment/Loud of
War: The communist who married the daughter of Coca Cola's CEO is being
tortured in East Germany... by being forced to listen to "Itsy Bitsy Teeny
Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini" on repeat for hours on end. With the record
spindle off-center. He writhes in pain.
13. Cross Dresser: Schlemmer disguises in
Ingeborg's dress to fool the Russians, so they'll let Otto free.
14. Deadpan Snarker: MacNamara's wife,
sometimes.
15. Dirty Commies
16. The Ditz: Scarlett, definitely.
17. Fake Nationality: Apart from the
German-speaking actors playing the Russians, Lilo Pulver, the actress playing
Ingeborg, is actually Swiss.
18. The Great Politics Mess-Up: This time
the other way round. Before August 1961, people could cross the border between
West and East Berlin quite easily - which millions of East Germans used to move
to the promised golden west. The movie was based on this premise and suffered
when the wall was built.
19. Guile Hero: MacNamara
20. History Marches On: When production
commenced in Berlin, there was no wall. Halfway through production, the
Deutsche Demokratische Republik decided, quite inconveniently, to erect the
first layers of what would eventually become Die Mauer. This threw a monkey
wrench in the plans of the filmmakers, especially when they had obtained
permits to shoot near the Brandenburg Gate. It also meant that as mentioned
above, that the movie entered theaters already dated with a side of Too Soon.
21. Impoverished Patrician: Graf von
Droste-Schattenburg, who is paid to adopt Otto.
22. Improbably Cool Car: MacNamara's
"Adenauer" Mercedes; a regional Coca-Cola plant manager in Germany in
1961 would likely have had a smaller, near-taxi-spec "Ponton"
Mercedes if not an Opel Rekord or Ford Taunus as a company car.
23. Well, West Berlin was the
"show-window of the West", so maybe he got a bigger car to impress
the locals and visitors from the East.
24. Lzherusskie: The Russian characters
are played by Austrian and German actors.
25. Misplaced Nationalism: Parodied when Jimmy
Cagney is upset with Coca-Cola heiress Scarlet for taking part in a
"Yankee, Go Home" rally: "But back home, everybody hates the
Yankees!" ("Ami, Go Home" would have been a completely different
thing, of course...)
26. Product Placement: No wonder if the
main character is a Coca-Cola exec.
27. Richard Wagner: The German doctor who
finds out Scarlett's pregnant is very fond of him, and sadly missed the 3rd act
of Die Walküre / The Valkyrie
28. Sexy Secretary: Ingeborg, played by
Lilo Pulver.
29. Shout Out: To Little Caesar, Gone
with the Wind, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Public Enemy, Ninotchka
30. Too Soon: Especially the Germans
weren't very fond of Billy Wilder making fun of the wall. The movie was
Vindicated by History though - later, in The Eighties.
31. Wide-Eyed Idealist: Otto about
Communism. He even thinks it's a capitalist lie that Siberia is cold, and is
happy that the Communists assigned them "a magnificent apartment, just a
short walk from the bathroom!".
32. You No Take Candle: The Russians.
33. Zany Scheme: At one point, they need
a Zany Scheme to revert the effects of another one. Which they are responsible
for.