In the last film of his pre-retirement career, James Cagney is an electric dynamo of pushy, motor-mouthed aggressiveness, whether playing dirty tricks on the East Germans or warming his way into his sexy secretary’s glockenspiel. Wilder was forced to build a stand-in Gate set on a sound stage in West Germany. The film is so funny, its appeal wasn’t even compromised when the Brandenburg Gate closed right in the middle of production, marking the beginning of the Berlin Wall. To paraphrase a third act one-liner, the theme is that everything is ‘hopeless, but not serious.’ Although any show with Hitler jokes flirts with bad taste, none of these have real bite, and they’re at the expense of pompous Commies and Capitalists alike. He brings on the jokes, gags, puns and political jabs so quickly that even his perfect cast of fast-talking farceurs has a hard time keeping up the pace. One, Two, Three is his Hellzapoppin’ ode to Cold War politics, the classy comedy with the machine-gun pacing. How fast is too fast in comedy? Billy Wilder wanted to find out.
Production Designers Robert Stratil, Heinrich Weidemann Starring James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Street Date / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Diamond’s high-pressure speeches, without slurring so much as a single syllable.ġ961 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. The retirement-age James Cagney practically blows a fuse rattling through Wilder and I.A.L. One of the most finely tuned comedies ever made, this political satire crams five hours’ worth of wit and sight gags into 115 minutes. Billy Wilder opted to step on the joke accelerator to see what top speed looked like. Some like their comedy hot and some like it cold.
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