Countdown to comedy

One, Two, Three was spotlighted last evening at CineVerse, which provoked an enjoyable group dissection of the film's merits and messages. Our discussion yielded the following points:

WHAT IS BRAVE, UNIQUE AND INTERESTING ABOUT ONE, TWO, THREE, ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING WHEN IT WAS RELEASED (1961)?

·       It attempts to spoof both communism and capitalism at a time when tensions were high between the United States and Soviet Union and in a location (West Berlin) that was ground zero for this ideological clash; interestingly, the Berlin Wall was being constructed as the film was in production, ratcheting up the real world tension all the more.

·       Americans are depicted as arrogant, rude, coarse, aggressive, and fixated on sex

·                The communists are depicted as devious, paranoid and distrustful and hateful

·                The film employs a rapid fire comedic pace where one liners are rattled off like machine gun fire and viewers are challenged to keep up with the speedy dialogue and jokes. The speed of the dialogue is a testament to top-notch writing and on-the-spot comedic timing.

•       It manages to predominantly feature two icons of American capitalism: Coca-Cola (it’s surprising that the beverage company allowed their product to be spotlighted here) and James Cagney, a major box-office draw from years earlier and a star symbol product of Hollywood.

•       The movie is prescient in that it predicts the scenario of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

IS THIS FILM TOO MUCH OF A CULTURAL ARTIFACT AND PRODUCT OF ITS TIMES TO BE ENJOYED TODAY? IS IT TOO ANCHORED IN THE EARLY 1960S?

•       There are many now dated references to things contemporary for 1961—including Stripe toothpate, Kruschev’s shoe-banging at the United Nations, the Itsie Bitsie Teenie Weenie song, Huntley and Brinkley name dropping and more.

•       Yet, it’s rewarding to film and history buffs to pay attention for these pop culture references and bits of humor that would have been relevant 50 plus years ago.

•       The fact that the Cold War is over doesn’t diminish the value of the satire of American consumerist culture and how we’re perceived by those in other countries, two topics that remain relevant.

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WHY IS JAMES CAGNEY A WISE CASTING CHOICE FOR THE ROLE OF MCNAMARA?

•       The actor has a manic energy, spry physicality and sharp comedic sense of humor he brings to this fast-talking character.

•       He’s also strongly associated with the tough guy gangster roles he played in the 1930s, so he brings that baggage with him that he is a force to be reckoned with and that he has the power to expand his territory and safeguard his interests as he did when he was a gangster.

•       In portraying an “ugly American” type character, Cagney is leveraging against his popularity and powerful screen image as an American actor icon, essentially serving as a caricature.

THE FRAMING AND COMPOSITIONS WITHIN ONE, TWO, THREE ARE ADMIRED BY MANY CRITICS

Film blogger Trevor Link offered this fascinating theory on the movie: “Wilder uses the wideness of the frame to great effect here: the aspect ratio, in fact, even approximates the proportions of a dollar bill. He organizations his figures in a way that recalls the multi-panel shape of the comic strip (see here and here). He also fills the frame with bold, cartoonish imagery that pops and bursts out towards the viewer (see here and here). This imagery, this sense of space, doesn’t mock what it depicts–this is not jingoistic propaganda. Instead, it creates a field, a plane (flat, in every way, like the dollar bill), where value is suffocated, as though conspiratorially, and dispensed with in the black of night. The cartoon, the comic strip, or the circus (which is recalled here through the use of the Aram Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance”) provide the appropriate metaphors: this is a space where up can be down, black can be white, and everything opens itself to the vulgarity of mockery. The film’s wide frame, like the dollar, seems to hold everything and nothing at once and to announce that no meaning can exist outside, for there is no meaning other than what can be grafted onto the dollar.”

WHAT OTHER FILMS DOES ONE TWO MAKE YOU THINK OF?

•       Ninotchka, a 1939 movie co-written by Wilder in which communism and capitalism clash and the Soviets are satirized

•       Dr. Strangelove and The Producers, two later sixties pictures that lampooned past and present political enemies of the U.S.-the Soviets and the Nazis, and two movies that had the guts to make farcical entertainment out of powderkeg political figures and ideologies

•       My Fair Lady/Pygmalion, in how McNamara serves as a kind of Henry Higgins to Otto’s Eliza Doolittle, attempting to remake Otto’s image