One two three

One, Two, Three (One, Two, Three) is an American film directed by Billy Wilder and released in 1961. Based on in Ferenc Molnár's play of the same name, is one of Billy Wilder's great comedic films, set in Cold War Berlin. He was nominated for an Oscar for best photography.

Synopsis

At the height of the Cold War, C.R. "Mac" MacNamara (James Cagney) is a senior executive at the Coca-Cola Company, stationed in Berlin after a fiasco a few years earlier in the Middle East that still has him bitter. Temporarily based in West Berlin, Mac maneuvers for the position of head of the Coca-Cola Company in Western Europe, based in London. While working on a deal to introduce Coca-Cola to the Soviet Union, he dawdles with his secretary, the sexy Fräulein Ingeborg (Liselotte Pulver), and tries to overlook the antics of her not-so-denazified staff. One day, Mac receives a call from his boss W.P. Hazeltine (Howard St. John), from Atlanta. Scarlett Hazeltine (Pamela Tiffin), his temperamental but somewhat innocent 17-year-old daughter, is flying to Berlin. Mac is commissioned to take care of the guest.

The stay, scheduled for two weeks, is extended to two months, and Mac discovers the reason for young Scarlett's attraction to West Berlin when he receives the news that she has married Otto Piffl (Horst Buchholz), an ardent anti-capitalist from communist East Germany. The couple heads to Moscow in search of a new life (We have been assigned a magnificent apartment, just a few meters from the bathroom!). When Hazeltine and his wife announce that they will arrive in Berlin the next day to pick up their daughter, the situation points to a monumental disaster, and Mac manages it by setting up the young communist and having him arrested by the East Side police, using for this all kinds of tricks and with the intervention of Frau Ingeborg. Otto is tortured by listening to the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" during his interrogation until he gives in and signs a confession as an American spy.

Faced with the revelation that Scarlett is pregnant, and pressured by his wife Phyllis, a dour and moody woman, who is obsessed with getting her family back to the United States as soon as possible, Mac travels to bring back to Otto with the help of his new Soviet business partners. With his boss on his way, he decides that his only chance lies in making Otto a model son-in-law, which means, among other things, making him a capitalist with aristocratic pedigree through his adoption by of a bankrupt earl. Eventually, the Hazeltines accept his new son-in-law to the point that Otto is made head of operations for Western Europe, while Mac receives a promotion that brings him back to Atlanta as Director of Purchasing. Mac reconciles with his family at the airport and, to celebrate his promotion, buys them a Coca Cola. In a final irony, when he delivers the bottles to his family, he discovers that the last bottle, his own, is Pepsi Cola.