The Arrangement (1969)

Based on his own novel, and rumoured to be semi-autobiographical, "The Arrangement" is a 1969 drama by director Elia Kazan.The plot? Kirk Douglas plays Eddie Anderson, an advertising executive who suffers an existential crisis. Finding his success, money and mansions to be but hollow testaments to a career founded on deceit, Eddie grows to hate himself. He attempts suicide."The Arrangement" is routinely mocked for its aesthetic, which awkwardly blends realism, surrealism, drama, comedy, satire, 1960s garishness and lots of intrusive camera tricks. These criticisms are all true. But "The Arrangement" also feels like a very personal film, it has a certain wisdom about it, and Kazan sketches a number of sublime little moments. In Kazan's hands, Eddie becomes a man elevated by the very post-war capitalism which fills him with self-loathing. Seeking escape, he thus gets himself thrown into a mental hospital, where he spends his days outdoors, looking up at the sky. With the whole world insane, poor Eddie has finally found some semblance of sanity."I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody instead of a bum," a character says in Kazan's "On the Waterfront". In "The Arrangement", of course, Eddie "has class". He is "somebody". He has escaped the waterfronts and slums of his fathers and forefathers before him. But what then? A jaded communist, Kazan's films have often explicitly been "about America", "about American values" and "about the way America changes". They're preoccupied with frustrated masculinity, middle-aged malaise and the trappings of both poverty and wealth. "The Arrangement" goes beyond these themes in that it was also part of a loose trilogy of films by Kazan, all about the aspirations of American immigrants and businessmen. The first of these film was "America, America", which watched as hopeful immigrants crossed the seas and reached out for the welcoming arms of the United States. Here, in the Land of Opportunity, they dream of forging better lives. Kazan's "The Arrangement" subverts this optimism. Replacing hope with dejection, the film undercut the dreams and aspirations of first and second generation immigrants, and portrays the American Dream as something duplicitous and ultimately destructive. Next came "The Last Tycoon", a film about a successful movie producer whose climb to the top comes at a heavy price. Ironically, the financial failure of "Tycoon" would spur Kazan into retirement.7/10 – See Kazan's "Wild River", Ray's "Bigger than Life" and "The Swimmer"(1968).

Two hours-plus of Kirk Douglas having a nervous breakdown. If that appeals to you then you're likely to enjoy Elia Kazan's idiotic adaption of his own novel. Presumably the book had some sort of deep meaning (at least to Kazan), but this film is a mess. Douglas is a highly regarded advertising exec will all the trappings of success: money; a beautiful home; 3 cars; Deborah Kerr as a wife. Playing 44(!) but actually closer to 54, Douglas is woefully miscast. His angst is never anything but comical and it manifests itself in the form of sexy Faye Dunaway (a free spirited girl who awakens in Douglas the need to find himself). Douglas grits his teeth a lot, Kerr is very under-utilized as his wife, Dunaway is never anything but angry and, as Douglas's father, Richard Boone comes across as if he were auditioning for the title role in a community theater production of "Zorba the Greek." Boone's casting is particularly baffling considering the fact that he's actually a year younger than Douglas! Despite offering up a lot of cinematic pyrotechnics like flashbacks, flash forwards, freeze frames and more, Kazan's film is silly rather than compelling. Hume Cronyn, Barry Sullivan and Michael Higgins are among the supporting cast. The high gloss cinematography is by Robert Surtees.

The Arrangement (1969)You might say this movie is about a very successful man coming to realize his success means nothing in the big picture and all he wants is time to be himself, to enjoy life simply.Or you might say this is a movie about a man cheating on his wife with a younger woman and all the fallout that goes with that.Or you might say this is a psychoanalytical dive inward to a man realizing he was ruined by his parents and trapped by his wife, and he descent into introspection makes him go almost mad, and then mad. And he likes it that way.You might even say this is an exercise in narrative storytelling, with a virtuosic layering and intercutting of all these elements into a single highly complex tale.Kirk Douglas is the lynchpin to all of this, and The Arrangement, a masterpiece if there ever was one, is the merging of art-house cinema with mainstream Hollywood. Except that there was no real art-house movie scene in 1969. This film pushes the boundaries as hard as they could be and still survive at all as a mainstream release. Director Elia Kazan is certainly one of the greats of the era (Scorsese agrees here) and he went out on a limb with editor Stefan Arnsten to make something utterly unique. There are foreshadowings of Woody Allen (though without humor) and Six Feet Under (in the kind of surrealism created by editing and the changing presence of people in a single scene). The plot is also intensely personal. Kazan, born in Istanbul and brought to American when he was four, was the son of Greek immigrants and his father was actually a rug merchant. And Kazan was apparently having an affair at the time of the shooting (he remarried in 1969 and later had a child). The screenplay is Kazan's and it's based a 1967 novel, also by Kazan. So if this is a deeply felt movie about a man having a mid-life crisis, it's understandable. Is it overwrought and self-indulgent? It has that potential for viewers who don't connect with the style or the characters, but for me it was too honest and well made to brush off. I got sucked in and was mesmerized by the swirling, teetering effects that never let you get confused or out of control.

A rich executive experiences a mid-life crisis, tries to chuck it all, and rekindles a relationship with a co-worker. The cast is pretty good: Douglas as the weary executive, Kerr as his understanding wife, and especially Dunaway as his mistress. Kerr boldly bares more than her soul. Also on hand are Boone and Cronyn, but the entire cast is wasted in this nonsensical drama. Kazan tries to liven things up with slick, annoyingly amateurish camera work but fails miserably, not helped by the lackluster source material, the director's own trashy, best-selling novel. The plot is rambling and uninteresting and the film drags on much too long.