And like all of Capra, much of Sturges, and the late Lubitsch fihns, Wilder usually introduced specific moral questions into his comedies, issues embodied by the film's characters, who worked them out in the film's action. The best Wilder comedies are a blend of tough, witty dialogue, a serious moral question examined with intelligence and without overstatement, lively and engaging performances, and clever scenes of comic human interaction that reverse the usual Hollywood expectations. Wilder hit his stride in about x95o, when he began combining the exposure of human callous-ness and moral corruption of his earlier films with a comedic structure. The two Berlin films shed an interesting light on the Wilder decade between them. A Foreign Affair focuses on the corruption, squalor, and rubble of postwar occupied Berlin.
Love becomes merely a commodity that, like anything else, can be bought, sold, or traded.
One, Two, Three, on the other hand, is a study of the new Berlin that grew from this rubble, using the American dollar as its manure. The new Berlin is slick, skyscrapered, and bureaucratized, retaining very little of its original German soul, capitulating completely to the dollar, the bomb, and Coca-Cola. To some extent, the Berlin journey in Wilder's two films also mirrors the journey of the former Berliner who made the films, from iconoclastic comic moralist to slick, superficial humorist. Many of the themes, traits, and devices of A Foreign Affair returned to dominate the films in Wilder's great decade. Wilder consistently juxtaposed comedy with moral corruption, human insincerity, and a perversion of the social and emotional relationships that make life livable.