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This 1961 release that runs 115 minutes is dated,BUT,what goes around comes back around.Its also in B&W for really no good reason for that,thus 1/2 star off.James Cagney, its also the last starring role in a film HE carried and shows another level of brilliance he had.COMEDY !!! This film was made for the time,1961.No Berlin wall just yet and Kennedy was our president and we were losing the cold war.Comedy is always the answer in trying times like that and so writer/director Billy Wilder gives us a fantastic humorous look that skewers the US and capitalism as well as communism as both being silly.To be sure but 16 years after the end of WW11 and the location of this film being Berlin,there are even more "German"jokes than US or Russian.Its so politically incorrect it has offensives for everyone and thats what makes it a "Black Comedy".It could NEVER be made today.There are a few reference to classic roles in other films that Cagney made like when he threatens to smash a grapefruit in someones face.
Today the film can bei just as relevant,just change the russians for the 99% !!!Coke could very easily be McDonalds today !!!
The pace is fast and snappy in more than a few ways and the ones liners,well,
" Schlemmer you're back in the SS, small salary! "
byThe cast is funny with a few recognizable faces,but it is Cagney's film.Trailer URL follows the picture and a IMDB summary is below.If you do more than stare at movie screens and actually pay attention to what is said,its your kinda of film,unless you are a PC baby.
Berlin is the epitome of political and economic polarization. A microcosm of that polarization is the life of American C.R. MacNamara, known as Mac to his friends. He is Coca-Cola's head of West Berlin operations, although he feels he deserves to be Coca-Cola's head of European operations based in London. Mac's wife, Phyllis, wants him instead to get a steady and stable job back in head office in Atlanta. His West Berlin staff are all still used to treating him like their old master, the Fuhrer. The one exception is his secretary, Ingeborg, who is the latest in the long line of his secretary mistresses. And he's working on a trade agreement of getting Coca-Cola into the Russian market. His life goes into a tailspin when he hosts Scarlett Hazeltine in his home for two weeks. She is the seventeen year old spoiled and party-loving daughter of his Atlanta based boss, Wendell Hazeltine. Unlike most of the stops she's made on her European trip, Scarlett seems to like West Berlin and stays ... Written by Huggo
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