Monday, July 12, 2010

One Two Three

This movie is hilarious. Truly nuts. SHR and I saw it a number of years ago at BAM and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It might be even funnier upon second viewing.

James Cagney plays a Coke executive in West Berlin with an eye on advancing in the company. So he agrees to babysit his boss's wild 16-year-old daughter for a few weeks. Unfortunately for Cagney, she falls in love with a young Communist in East Berlin. One madcap development after another piles up and Cagney has an amazing quip for each one.

Take the sensibility of a 1930's screwball comedy and marry it to 1960's satire and you can imagine this movie. This sentence from All Movie Guide sums it up well, "Seldom pausing for breath, Billy Wilder's film is a crackling, mile-a-minute farce, taking satiric scattershots at Coca-Cola, the Cold War (the film is set in the months just before the erection of the Berlin Wall), Russian red tape, Communist and capitalist hypocrisy, Southern bigotry, the German "war guilt," rock music, and even Cagney's own movie image." The joke about Cagney was completely unexpected and pretty damn great.

Some other good lines amongst the dozens:
Otto: I will not have my son grow up to be a capitalist.
Scarlet: When he's 18 he can make his mind up whether he wants to be a capitalist or a rich communist.

C.R. MacNamara - Cagney: Any world that can produce the Taj Mahal, William Shakespeare, and striped toothpaste can't be all bad.

C.R. MacNamara to a Russian official about the Cuban cigar he had: You know something? You guys got cheated. This is a pretty crummy cigar.
Peripetchikoff: Do not worry. We send them pretty crummy rockets.

Phyllis MacNamara: Why can't you get yourself a nice permanent job with the home office in Atlanta?
C.R. MacNamara: Atlanta? You can't be serious! That's Siberia with mint juleps!
Directed by Billy Wilder
1961
TCM

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