In sheer word count, Cagney's has to be one of the longest roles in screen history, and in fact the actor was so exhausted by filming that he didn't make another movie for 20 years. Uh-oh, Boss is flying in tomorrow! Cagney has to find the Communist and convert him in one morning, otherwise no London-which he does in a hurtling, hypercaffeinated final act, despite the disapproval of Arlene Francis, delish as his elegantly wisecracking wife. His boss from Atlanta ("Siberia with mint juleps") asks him to keep an eye on his Europe-touring spitfire daughter (Pamela Tiffin), who falls for a hot-blooded beatnik Communist (Horst Buchholz). His trick was to apply the rat-a-tat, mile-a-minute dialogue of screwball comedy, and he admitted later he set out to make "the fastest picture in the world." James Cagney plays the ultimate capitalist, a Coca-Cola exec scheming to open the Soviet market and thereby nab a higher post in London. Perhaps only expat Billy Wilder could pull off a spoof of Cold War conflict set in a divided postwar Berlin.
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