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:
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.
Cagney holds up a piece of fruit so it looks like his famous "grapefruit" scene from The Public Enemy.
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.
This comes in handy when Schlemmer gives away that the investigative reporter who threatens to expose the whole deal is a former SS officer.
Bait and Switch: The very movie starts with it. James Cagney starts talking how the world was looking to Washington DC on August the 13th of 1961... for a sports game. Oh, by the way, on the same day the Commies built The Berlin Wall.
Blackmail Is Such an Ugly Word: The aforementioned Intrepid Reporter is unable to be put off even with extravagant bribes until Schlemmer does a Nazi salute to him in front of MacNamara. The reporter quickly backs off.
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 nickel in a Coke machine at Templehof and is rather annoyed that he receives... a bottle of Pepsi.
Peripetchikoff: "We have emergency meeting with Swiss Trade Delegation. They send us twenty car-loads of cheese. Totally unacceptable... full of holes."
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.
Cross Dresser: Schlemmer disguises in Ingeborg's dress to fool the Russians, so they'll let Otto free.
(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!"
Fake Nationality: Apart from the German-speaking actors playing the Russians, Lilo Pulver, the actress playing Ingeborg, is actually Swiss.
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.
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.
Impoverished Patrician: Graf von Droste-Schattenburg, currently working as a restroom attendant. He is paid to adopt Otto.
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.
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.
It's All About Me: 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 Scarlet 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.
Kicked Upstairs: The fate that MacNamara is trying to avoid for most of the film: reassignment to the home office in Atlanta. It happens in the end, but he faces it with equanimity, since it will let him be closer to his family.
Lzherusskie: The Russian characters are played by Austrian and German actors.
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...)
Only Sane Woman: Phyllis, who pokes holes in MacNamara's Zany Scheme logic, and is generally unimpressed with the absurd goings-on.
Product Placement: No wonder, if the main character is a Coca-Cola exec.
Pygmalion Plot: MacNamara has ten hours to turn Otto from a slovenly Communist to a dapper businessman worthy of the boss's daughter.
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
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!".
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