Line #45 Film/OneTwoThree


1	[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/360x480_214343.jpg]]
2
3	''One, Two, Three'' is a 1961 American UsefulNotes/ColdWar comedy movie directed and co-written by Creator/BillyWilder. Set in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}} shortly before the wall was built, it's about a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin who has to care for his boss's daughter, who is spending her holiday there. While also attempting to do business with some Communists, to expand Coca-Cola beyond the Iron Curtain. And learning that his marriage is about to fall apart. Plenty of HilarityEnsues.
4
5	Things seem to be going fine for C. R. [=MacNamara=] (Creator/JamesCagney): Coca-Cola is doing well in West Germany, and he's about to complete a deal with the Soviet trade commission to get the brand past the Iron Curtain. Hoping this will earn him a prized position in London, Mac finds himself having to jump through one more hoop: the daughter of his boss is on a tour of Europe, and said boss ''insists'' that Mac look after her. So for over a month Scarlett Hazeltine (Pamela Tiffin) is a guest of Mac and his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis).
6
7	Scarlett's parents have made plans to come and take her back home. Unfortunately, her new, East German husband, Otto Ludwig Piffl (Creator/HorstBuchholz), has other plans. It seems Scarlett had been sneaking out of the house the whole time she was with the [=MacNamaras=], and slipping behind the Iron Curtain to have fun on the town. Which is where she ran into the young Communist, and naturally, they fell in love... ''[[SarcasmMode naturally]]''. At first Mac tries to get the marriage annulled, by hook or by crook – but then it turns out that Scarlett is pregnant. So now Mac must try and somehow make Otto acceptable to Scarlett's conservative, high-society parents so he doesn't get thrown out into the streets.
8
9	[[TheFilmOfThePlay Adapted from]] a 1929 Hungarian play (''Egy, kettő, három'') by Ferenc Molnár, with plot elements lifted from Wilder's own screenplay for ''Film/{{Ninotchka}}''. James Cagney retired from acting after completing this film, although he returned 20 years later to star in ''Film/{{Ragtime}}''.
10
11	----
12	!!Examples:
13
14	* ActorAllusion: There are several in-jokes about Creator/JamesCagney. At one point he threatens to push a grapefruit in Otto's face, mimicking the most famous scene in ''Film/ThePublicEnemy1931'', and after meeting [=MacNamara=], Creator/RedButtons' character does a Cagney impression with the shrugging gesture that Cagney's character used in ''Film/AngelsWithDirtyFaces''.
15	* TheAllegedCar: The Soviet trade delegation's Moskvitch 407.
16	-->"Is exact replica of 1937 Nash!" [[note]]It isn't. It's a much smaller car with up-to-date late '50s styling. How the Vopos wound up with a French Simca Aronde instead of an East German or Soviet model is pure movie magic, too...[[/note]]
17	* AllGermansAreNazis: Played with. [=MacNamara=] has a former SS member as his assistant; one scene shows his employees acting like complete robots when issued orders. This comes in handy when Schlemmer [[spoiler:gives away that the investigative reporter who threatens to expose the whole deal is a former SS first lieutenant, an Obersturmführer]].
18	* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: And during UsefulNotes/ColdWar, no one was worse than a Commie.
19	* ArtisticLicenseCars: What the Soviet trade delegation claims to be an "exact replica of 1937 Nash" is a much smaller car with up-to-date late 1950s styling.
20	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: One of the thing that really annoys [=MacNamara=] about the East German Commies is that they buy Coca-Cola in West Berlin but don't return the empties.
21	* AwfulWeddedLife: Peripetchikoff is implied to have one, complete with ObnoxiousInLaws. When one of his comrades suggest they defect, he responds that unlike him, he has a wife and in-laws the authorities might take action against... then enthusiastically agrees to it.
22	* BaitAndSwitch: The very movie starts with it. [=MacNamara=] starts talking how America was looking to UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC on August the 13th of 1961... for a baseball game. Oh, by the way, on the same day the Commies built the UsefulNotes/BerlinWall.
23	* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: The aforementioned IntrepidReporter is unable to be put off even with extravagant bribes [[spoiler:until Schlemmer does a Nazi salute to him in front of [=MacNamara=] and addresses him with an SS rank. The reporter quickly backs off [[note]]The allies would never have allowed a former SS officer to work as a reporter in postwar Germany[[/note]]]].
24	* BrickJoke: At least two:
25	** [=MacNamara=] is annoyed because Commies keep buying Coke in West Berlin, drinking it in East Berlin, but don't return the bottles. When he and his crew drive to East Berlin to spring Otto from prison, they have an uncomfortable few minutes waiting at the Brandenburg Gate because the border guard makes them wait so he can fetch the emptied six-pack of Coca-Cola (that [=MacNamara=] had given to him earlier to let him through with no questions asked) from the guard-room.
26	** When [=MacNamara=] wants to make a phone call to East Berlin, his assistant Schlemmer tells him that it is very complicated, as there are no direct lines and the call will have to be routed on a circuitous route via Stockholm and Warsaw. And then you often get the wrong number. At a later point in the film Schlemmer cheerfully announces to [=MacNamara=] that the call finally got through. "And like I told you: Wrong number."
27	* BrokenPedestal: Otto starts out as a dedicated communist who appears to have enthusiastically swallowed the party line. This changes after the Stasi assume he's a spy and torture him into confessing. When [=McNamara=] offers him a job and a title, Otto turns into a dedicated capitalist almost immediately.
28	* TheCameo: The hotel orchestra playing the German version of "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is conducted by composer Friedrich Hollaender ("[[Film/TheBlueAngel Falling in Love Again]]"). And Creator/RedButtons appears as a U.S. military policeman.
29	* CatchPhrase: [=MacNamara=] has two: "Sitzen machen!"[[note]] The ungrammatical German phrase can be rendered as "sitting make!" in English.[[/note]] and "SCHLEMMER!!!" Both are [[BorrowedCatchphrase borrowed]] by other characters in the course of the movie.
30	* ClumsyCopyrightCensorship: Completely and utterly averted. Creator/JoanCrawford, at the time a major stockholder of Pepsi, was enraged by what she saw as blatant product placement. [[TakeThat In response]], the very last gag in the film involves Pepsi -- [=MacNamara=] puts a nickel in a Coke machine at Templehof airport and is rather annoyed that he receives... a bottle of Pepsi.
31	* ComicallyMissingThePoint:
32	-->'''Peripetchikoff:''' We have emergency meeting with Swiss Trade Delegation. They send us twenty car-loads of cheese. Totally unacceptable... full of holes.
33	* ComicallySmallBribe: [=MacNamara=] gets the East German border guards at the Brandenburg Gate to wave his car through and not ask inconvenient questions by giving them ... a six-pack of Coca-Cola.
34	* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: The communist who married the daughter of Coca Cola's CEO is being tortured in East Berlin ... by being forced to listen to "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini" on repeat for hours on end. When that is not enough, they play it with the record spindle off-center. He writhes in pain and finally caves in, confessing to being an American spy. It should be noted this was an inverted case of AuthorAppeal: Billy Wilder ''hated'' RockAndRoll.
35	* CrossDresser: [[spoiler:Schlemmer disguises in Ingeborg's dress to fool the Russians, so they'll let Otto free.]]
36	* DeadpanSnarker: [=MacNamara=]'s wife Phyllis.
37	--> ''(after [=MacNamara=] comes up with a wild story about Otto being a secret agent with a posthumous medal)'' "Why don't you give one to yourself? First-class heel with oak leaf cluster!"
38	* DefectorFromDecadence: Two Russian spies were sent to discover the Coca Cola secret formula, and ended up becoming successful American businessmen. [[spoiler: Some of the Russians end up defecting too]].
39	* DirtyCommunists: All the commies depicted are duplicitous and perfectly willing to screw their fellow party members for their own benefit.
40	* TheDitz: Scarlett, definitely.
41	* DoubleMeaning: Schlemmer told [=MacNamara=] that during World War II he had been "with the underground", correctly assuming that [=MacNamara=] would take that to mean "with the anti-Nazi resistance". In the course of the movie, when it emerges that that is not the case, he lamely explains he was with the [[UsefulNotes/BerlinUAndSBahn underground railway system]].
42	* EvenBeggarsWontChooseIt: [=MacNamara=] lampshades that the Soviets are so desperate to get their hand on Coca-Cola, that they once tried to create their own brand called "Kremlin Cola". It was so bad that they gave all of it away to Albania, who then used it as a flea bath for sheep.
43	* FailedFutureForecast: When production commenced in Berlin, there was no wall. Halfway through production, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik decided, [[{{Understatement}} 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. 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.
44	* FawltyTowersPlot: [=MacNamara=] sets Otto up to get arrested, then has to rescue him and quickly concoct a scheme to make him acceptable to Hazeltine, all to get a promotion. He even has some character similarities to [[Series/FawltyTowers Basil Fawlty]].
45	* FunWithPalindromes: Scarlett finds it exciting that "Otto" reads the same back to front.
46	* GodwinsLaw: In a sign of maybe not the healthiest marriage, Phyllis refers to her husband as "Mein Führer."
47	* GoingCommando: Scarlett proudly tells Phyllis [=MacNamara=] that her husband Otto does not even wear underwear. Phyllis' response: "No wonder we are losing the Cold War!"
48	* GoneHorriblyRight: [=MacNamara=]'s scheme to turn Otto into a suitable son-in-law for the Hazeltines succeeds so well that they award Otto the position as head of European distribution to which [=MacNamara=] had been aspiring for years.
49	* GuileHero: [=MacNamara=] is one of the nominal kind.
50	* HyperCompetentSidekick: Schlemmer (Hanns Lothar) often is this to [=MacNamara=], as he is the one who has to implement most of his zany schemes.
51	* ImpoverishedPatrician: Count von Droste-Schattenburg, currently working as a restroom attendant. He [[spoiler:is paid to adopt Otto]]. Evidently his family has had money problems for a long time, as he shows [=MacNamara=] a photo of the ruins of his ancestral castle - destroyed not in World War II, but by the Turks in the 17th century.
52	* ImprobablyCoolCar: [=MacNamara's=] "Adenauer" Mercedes; a regional Coca-Cola plant manager in Germany in 1961 would have had at most a smaller, near-taxi-spec "Ponton" Mercedes, but more likely an Opel Rekord or Ford Taunus or even a VW Beetle as a company car. Mac's independently wealthy, though, so maybe he bought it with his own money at a better price than he could've gotten back home in the US.
53	* InsaneTrollLogic: [=MacNamara=] is annoyed that everybody stops working and stands at attention whenever he enters the main office room, because it's hardly in keeping with the values of freedom and democracy. Schlemmer tries to explain to him that it is because the employees have internalized these values that they keep doing it. He ordered them to stop standing at attention, but they keep disobeying him!
54	* ItsAllAboutMe: [=MacNamara=] is quite happy to feed newlywed Otto to the East German secret police to save his career, flips out when it's discovered that Scarlett is pregnant because of what the boss will do to ''him'', and completely ignores the fact that his wife has completely had it with globetrotting and his behavior.
55	* KickedUpstairs: The fate that [=MacNamara=] is trying to avoid for most of the film: reassignment to the home office in Atlanta. [[spoiler:It happens in the end, but he faces it with equanimity, since it will let him be with his family, who have announced their intention to return to America with or without him.]]
56	* LargeHam:
57	** James Cagney's performance here exhausted him so much that he retired.
58	** Otto is also quite...passionate about being a Communist and chewing out the decadent West.
59	* {{Leitmotif}}: The ''Internationale'' for the Commies, ''Yankee Doodle'' for [=MacNamara=] and to signal how quickly time passes, as it's the tune played by his cuckoo clock.
60	* {{Multiboobage}}: Not in the movie itself, but the poster is (probably deliberately) reminiscent of a woman with three breasts.
61	* ObnoxiousInLaws: Peripetchikoff's are implied to be this, since he mentions they might be targeted by the SecretPolice if he defects... then enthusiastically agrees to defect.
62	* OnSecondThought: After the Russians realize Otto has been arrested as a spy, they start to waver on rescuing him:
63	-->'''Peripetchikoff:''' Do you know what happens if I defect? They will line up my family and shoot them! My wife, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law... ''[{{beat}}]'' ... Let's do it!
64	* OnlySaneWoman: Phyllis, who pokes holes in [=MacNamara=]'s ZanyScheme logic, and is generally unimpressed with the absurd goings-on.
65	* ProductPlacement: For Coca-Cola, which makes sense since the main character works for them. [[spoiler:And for Pepsi at the end.]]
66	* PygmalionPlot: [=MacNamara=] has ten hours to turn Otto from a slovenly Communist to a dapper businessman worthy of the boss's daughter.
67	* RealityHasNoSubtitles: Any time Germans are alone together, they speak German with no subtitles. Wilder uses visual cues, along with German words that sound similar to English words ("spion" for "spy") to help English-speaking audiences understand what they're talking about.
68	* Music/RideOfTheValkyries: The doctor who diagnoses that Scarlett is, what's the English word, ''pregnant'' mentions that he just missed the first act of ''[[Theatre/TheRingOfTheNibelung Die Walküre]]'' and rushes off to catch the rest of the opera, happily humming "''schwanger'' is pregnant" to this tune. Not long after the fully orchstrated version can be heard as [=MacNamara=] and co. dash to East Berlin at night to snatch Otto out of the jaws of the East German police.
69	* RoyallyScrewedUp: Apparently Count Droste-Schattenburg's family, at least he takes perverse pride in being descended from a hemophiliac ancestor.
70	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Bribery is a large part of [=MacNamara=]'s modus operandi throughout the movie, which e. g. enables him to [[spoiler: have Otto's and Scarlett's wedding papers removed from the East Berlin registry office and later returned and to get Count von Droste-Schattenburg to adopt Otto.]] Luckily for him, the Communists don't ask for that much and he can force Otto to vouch for part of the expenses.
71	* SettingUpdate: The original Molnár play is about a businessman whose biggest client's daughter marries an obnoxious young socialist. Wilder kept the basic premise but updated it from 1920s Paris to Berlin at the height of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.
72	* SexySecretary: [=MacNamara=]'s secretary Ingeborg, played by Lilo Pulver. The Soviet trade delegation is certainly taken with her.
73	* ShoutOut:
74	** The name of the hotel in East Berlin, Grand Hotel Potemkin, is obviously a shout-out to ''Film/BattleshipPotemkin'' and not the Czarist general and lover of Catherine the Great.
75	** A passionately romantic young woman from Atlanta called ''[[Film/GoneWithTheWind Scarlett]]''? Who'd have thought!
76	** Besides all the [[ActorAllusion Actor Allusions]] for Creator/JamesCagney, he also tips his hat to his Creator/WarnerBros colleague Creator/EdwardGRobinson by saying [[Film/LittleCaesar "Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?"]]
77	* StealthInsult: At the hotel, the Russians are entertained by a band playing "Yes, We've Got No Bananas". In the German lyrics (not heard in the movie) a man agonizes that his girlfriend wants bananas even though he offers her a variety of local produce. Bananas were the number one example of a thing that was much harder to get in East Germany than in West Germany.
78	* TakeThat:
79	** When Otto is interrogated by the Stasi, they drive him to confess... by making him listen to "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini" on repeat for hours on end. For what it's worth, Creator/BillyWilder ''hated'' rock music.
80	** At the very end of the movie, [=MacNamara=] puts a nickel in a vending machine and is clearly not happy when he receives a bottle of Pepsi.
81	* TitleDrop: Getting everyone to the airport, [=MacNamara=] shouts to Fritz, "Ein, Zwei, Drei!"
82	* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: C.R. [=MacNamara=] is a self-centered, social-climbing, sycophantic, dishonest, adulterous blowhard, but since Creator/JamesCagney's playing him, the audience is still on his side.
83	* VideoCredits: At the ''beginning'' of the film, with clips of the main actors accompanying their names.
84	* WhatDoesSheSeeInHim: Ingeborg and Peripetchikoff (Leon Askin).
85	* WideEyedIdealist: 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!".
86	* YiddishAsASecondLanguage: When a man enters shouting "Schmuck!", [=MacNamara=] at first thinks he's calling him a bad name.[[note]] In case you wondered, the Yiddish pejorative "schmuck" also exists in German, but with a different spelling and pronunciation: "Schmock". It also has a slightly different meaning and connotations, and is considered a much milder term than in American English.[[/note]] It turns out the guy is bringing the jewelry he ordered to kit out the bride and groom.
87	* YouNoTakeCandle: The Russians.
88	* ZanyScheme: At one point, they need a zany scheme to revert the effects of another one. Which they are responsible for.

Context Film / OneTwoThree