[no title]

One, Two, Three's travesty of Cold War politics, filmed in Berlin at the moment when the Wall went up, boils the war down to its essentials: "To hell with Krushchev!" "To hell with Frank Sinatra!" In a furiously paced slapstick entirely lacking The Apartment's humanity, no one is spared Wilder's acid pen: not the West Germans who, while "enjoying all the blessings of democracy" (i.e., Coca Cola), seek every opportunity to click their heels; nor the East Berliners, who don't return deposit bottles; nor the Russians, whose trio of emissaries are rather more decadent than their counterparts in Ninotchka; nor, finally, Coca Cola functionary/Yankee Doodle Dandy Jimmy Cagney, who speaks loudly and is all schtick. Pamela Tiffin's Patty Hearst–like runaway capitalist meets Horst Buchholz's runaway communist in Berlin-a bombed–out desert ripe for ideological battle, a place that, for Austrian–emigré Wilder, like Russia "is to get out of, not into."

This page may by only partially complete. For additional information about this film, view the original entry on our archived site.