One critic nominated "The President's Analyst", and "Dr. Strangelove" as the funniest 'cold war" comedies (1950--1991). I would add "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" and the present film, "One, Two Three". The piece was adapted from a Ferrenc Molnar comedy "Egy, Ketto, Harom", the same title in Magyar. With his partner I.A.L. Diamond, Billy Wilder adapted the play to film, to feature a harried and high-powered U.S. Coca Cola executive, Macnamara, played powerfully by James Cagney, in search of a marketing coup. He wants to open up the Soviet Union to Coke, knowing it will easily outsell its putrid rival, Kremlin Cola. To accomplish the opening up of the Soviet Empire to corporate pseudo-capitalism and the big rubles, he has been wooing three commissars (lifted from Wilder's "Ninotchka"). He also has a sexy secretary played by lovely Liselotte Pulver, about whom his U.S.-based wife, Arlene Francis, knows nothing, whom he is anxious to please. But on the verge of success with his coup--gained by giving up the secretary to work under the commissars in return for them giving him the business--his magnum opus is torpedoed by the arrival of his Boss's daughter. He is to chaperone her, keep her from harm or worse. The "or worse" turns out to be Otto Ludwig Piffl, a noisy and anti-USer radical with long hair (Horst Bucholz), who secretly marries the Southern-belle hippie daughter (Pamela Tiffin) after she escapes scrutiny long enough to become a disaster in the making. This leaves Macnamara only one way to save the situation: he must turn Piffl into something presentable. The ironic ending will leave you laughing as hard as I did when I first saw this very original comedy, notable for its satirical rapid-fire dialogue, its effervescent characters and its jaundiced look at the ethically-challenged best of both sides in the Cold War.
Review of One, Two, Three
