Tonight's Movie: One, Two, Three (1961) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

ONE, TWO, THREE (1961), the wild, manic, and very amusing comedy co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, has just been released as a Special Edition Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

Wilder cowrote the screenplay with I.A.L. Diamond, based on a play by Ferenc Molnar. It's the story of C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney), head of Coca-Cola Bottling in West Germany.

MacNamara's boss (Howard St. John) insists that MacNamara and his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis) host his 17-year-old daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin) on an extended visit.

Weeks later, with her parents due to arrive to take her home, Scarlett announces that she has secretly married a Communist named Otto (Horst Bucholz)...an announcement which is quickly followed by the news Scarlett is expecting a baby.

In order to save his own job and chances for promotion, MacNamara must somehow transform the adamant Communist into an elegant European capitalist who can win over Scarlett's parents as an acceptable surprise son-in-law.

I last saw this film 15 years ago, back in 2009, and it was great fun to revisit it. The movie is rather exhausting, so perhaps it's just as well to space out viewings, but I'm really fond of this film and its frenetic 104 minutes.

As I noted in my 2009 review, I especially love the last half hour when Cagney is barking out orders nonstop to accomplish his makeover of Otto. I've since read that that experience was demanding enough that Cagney decided he'd just as soon retire to his farm; it was two decades before he appeared on camera in another feature film, RAGTIME (1981).

I'd forgotten that MacNamara is not exactly the world's best husband, but Cagney's energetic performance is such that I find him fun to watch despite that angle.  I also especially enjoy Tiffin as the ditzy yet sweet Scarlett.

The dialogue is fantastic, cramming in all sorts of historic and cultural references which require that the viewer pay close attention in order to get all the jokes. I suppose some might say that the movie is "dated," but I would instead say that, like many movies, it's a marvelous relic of a very specific place and time, and it's up to the audience to be educated enough to understand the references.

I also love the early "product placement" with Coca-Cola prominently featured, culminating in a final joke regarding Pepsi-Cola.

The movie features black and white location shooting in Germany by Daniel L. Fapp and a marvelous score by Andre Previn which makes great use of arrangements of Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance."

The Kino Lorber print looks very good; the cinematography is nothing especially noteworthy, but the crisp black and white seems appropriate for a film set in Cold War Germany.

The sound is fine, but the rapid-fire dialogue is such that viewers with iffy hearing may want to use the disc's subtitles; I turned them on and found them difficult to read at times, with white letters on white backgrounds, but there was enough visible to be a useful supplement.

This Special Edition comes with a cardboard slipcase and reversible cover art. It also features a commentary track by Michael Schlesinger; the trailer; a gallery of trailers for three other films available from Kino Lorber; and two brief featurettes with Billy Wilder.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

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