One, Two, Three! (1961)

Well, the birthday celebrations continued throughout the week: Monday was Gabrielle (2005) featuring Isabelle Huppert at MoMA - one highlight was Ms. Huppert herself addressing the audience live, another was getting to see a friend who's been a bit scarce recently; Thursday was In My Life, the forgettable (I'm hoping) Broadway production and a relaxing dinner with another good friend in the East Village; Saturday was incredibly fun, productive & celebratory (I spent 4 hours traveling to and from Long Island and picking out a granite countertop, then played mahjong for a few hours until my friends whipped out a luscious birthday cake and homemade hot chocolate).

Then today, after church, I traipsed into Astoria, Queens, to see Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three! What a hoot -- it's a madcap rush, very funny at times, and an interesting contemporaneous take on the Cold War. C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney) is an inveterate philanderer and a frustrated Coca-Cola manager, stuck in Berlin with dreams of heading up the company's entire European operations from the London office. He and his wife end up in charge of the CEO's impestuous 17-year-old daughter, Scarlet, for two weeks (she has been shipped off to Europe to get her away from her latest unsuitable fiance). She stays for two months, but during that time, she appears to have been domesticated -- she is attending museums and concerts, and accepting her chaperones without complaint. On the eve of her parents' arrival in Berlin, Scarlet's subterfuges are laid bare -- she has been sneaking out every night into East Berlin to meet up with a new young man, Otto. This new man is no fiance, however; he is now her husband. On MacNamara's watch, Scarlet has managed to marry a knee-jerk anti-Capitalist. There go MacNamara's dreams of the London office!

Of course, it gets better than that. MacNamara scrambles to keep the lovers apart and get the marriage anulled ... only to find out that Scarlet is pregnant. So now he needs to spring Otto from jail (after the foul Stasi have used "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" -- is there no limit to their fiendishness? -- to torture Otto into confessing that he is truly an American spy) and then transform him into a suitable husband for Scarlet (this involves providing him with an aristocratic lineage, expensive clothing and makeover, and a managerial job at the Coca-Cola plant).

MacNamara's frantic efforts are rewarded, sublimely, not with the coveted London job, but with the promise of marital bliss (and a return to Atlanta) for MacNamara's long-suffering wife.

I'll be back to see more Billy Wilder films -- the retrospective runs through Nov. 13, 2005.