@DRDMovieMusings said:

Billy Wilder remains my favourite director. While some directors really are only effective in one genre, Wilder could take on any project and deliver classic entrants across genres - from rom-coms to comedies, to film noir, suspense, drama, even approaching horror (Sunset Boulevard has quite a grotesque edge, doesn't it?), with Wilder behind the camera, there was always a chance the project would be "the greatest" in its category, and several are.

I have not seen every movie Billy Wilder directed, but each time I sat down to see one for the first time, I came away thinking "wow, he can do no wrong."

Until this one. I just didn't get it.

James Cagney was incredible. He delivered his lines with the rapid-fire of a tommy gun, at such a frenetic rate I had difficulty at times even understanding what he said. I've no idea how he got his lines down, or how many takes any given scene may have taken, but he alone was a force of nature.

Unfortunately, the story held no tension for me, there was nothing at stake worth following. It was bound to happen, but I couldn't sit through this movie during my first attempt. Other movies that were hard to get through for me ended up being worth putting in the work (the original Ocean's Eleven, for example), but this one has yet to compel me to return to it. I will. One day. Maybe.

It was bound to happen. As Wilder had written on his epitaph that classic last line from his classic comedy Some Like It Hot, "Nobody's perfect!", he knew that included him, which is cute, since he's about as close to a perfect director as has ever lived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One,_Two,_Three#Production

Here is a blurb from Cagney's Wiki page about the movie:

One, Two, Three (1962)

Cagney's penultimate film was a comedy. He was hand-picked by Billy Wilder to play a hard-driving Coca-Cola executive in the film One, Two, Three.[153] Cagney had concerns with the script, remembering back 23 years to Boy Meets Girl, in which scenes were reshot to try to make them funnier by speeding up the pacing, with the opposite effect. Cagney received assurances from Wilder that the script was balanced. Filming did not go well, though, with one scene requiring 50 takes, something to which Cagney was unaccustomed.[154] In fact, it was one of the worst experiences of his long career. Cagney noted, "I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass."[151] For the first time, Cagney considered walking out of a film. He felt he had worked too many years inside studios, and combined with a visit to Dachau concentration camp during filming, he decided that he had had enough, and retired afterward.[155] One of the few positive aspects was his friendship with Pamela Tiffin, to whom he gave acting guidance, including the secret that he had learned over his career: "You walk in, plant yourself squarely on both feet, look the other fella in the eye, and tell the truth."[156]