Das Arrangement

Just resaw this movie after 36 years. All I could remember from the first time I saw this film at age 11 was the car crash. Anyhow, outstanding acting by all involved. However, the movie is stolen by the powerful and emotional performance of Faye Dunaway. Miss Dunaway is stunning, both physically and emotionally. She grits her teeth and gives one of her most intense and raw performances. The film however, has a sad and depressing flip to it; the American Dream turned into a nightmare. Made in the last 1960s, to most young viewers this Elia Kazan masterpiece probably seems a weird and strange ride. However, for children of the 60s, this movie captures the "Nature of the Beast" which was 1969.

The Arrangement is outstanding.

Panned and patronized at the time of it's initial release, Elia Kazan's adaptation of his best selling book THE ARRANGEMENT plays much better now than it did in 1969. Made after a 6 year hiatus from film-making at a time when movies were enjoying unheard of freedom due to the demise of the production code, THE ARRANGEMENT clearly shows that Kazan was still a director to be reckoned with. The basic premise was nothing new. A highly successful businessman (Kirk Douglas) suffers a mid-life crisis and attempts suicide. How he and the other characters deal with the aftermath make up the rest of the story. Kazan has always been an actor's director and the film provides a showcase for the young Faye Dunaway as Douglas' mistress who gets him to reexamine his life but wants out to be with someone else. Deborah Kerr in her last major film appearance is superb in the difficult role of the wife who tries to understand what Douglas is going through but doesn't want to give up the rich lifestyle she's become accustomed to. Strong support is given by Hume Cronyn as the family solicitor who has plans of his own and from Richard Boone in a rare non-Western role as Douglas' ailing father. His slide into dementia is both heartbreaking and terrifying. Marlon Brando had originally agreed to play the lead but bowed out allowing Kirk Douglas who really wanted to work with Kazan to step in. While not stage trained like the other principals, he acquits himself well in an emotionally as opposed to a physically demanding role. The combination of raw emotions, alternating points-of-view including black humor, and touches of surrealism was ambitious then and still is today (think American BEAUTY). The movie is not without its flaws. It runs too long and is occasionally sloppy in everything from editing to make-up but the powerful writing and intense performances make THE ARRANGEMENT provocative film-making nearly 40 years later. Called everything from a harrowing emotional ride to a self-indulgent mess, it is ultimately for the home viewer to decide (my rating indicates where I stand). Kazan will always be a controversial figure because of his HUAC testimony in the 1950's but his greatness as a director cannot be denied and remains captured on film for all to see.

Adapted by Kazan from his own novel, this ambitious if little-seen (at least in my neck of the woods) character drama emerges as an absorbing and highly personal adult piece, but one which is also pretty heavy-going and somewhat uneven in quality. Still, the director elicits excellent performances from his entire cast (with the star trio baring more than their souls in front of the cameras); Kirk Douglas is particularly impressive in one of his most interesting roles (certainly at this stage of his career, here playing the son of Richard Boone who, in real-life, is actually a year younger than Douglas!)...though Kazan, in his autobiography, seemed unhappy with having to make do with him over his first choice, Marlon Brando. It's strange that he hadn't thought of Douglas immediately to personify his alter ego on screen, since both had been immigrants and the actor would therefore have an instant connection with the character; actually, I feel that Brando's brooding intensity - as opposed to Douglas' dynamic hysterics - would have worn the film down even more than it already is...and, in any case, Marlon got to do his "mid-life crisis act" three years later in LAST TANGO IN Paris (1972)!

What is essentially an old-fashioned melodrama, particularly given the lack of young actors involved, it's brought up-to-date - and, one might say, to life - by a variety of cinematic tricks (which sometimes exasperate the spectator, as if Kazan had gone through one too many viewings of Richard Lester's strikingly similar PETULIA [1968]!): multiple flashbacks and fantasy sequences (Douglas has visions of mistress Faye Dunaway everywhere, and even has her morphing into wife Deborah Kerr during a love scene); we also get visualizations of his interior monologues in which the younger, successful Douglas straightens out his older, bitter self; and, at one point, there's even a fist-fight underscored by cartoon captions a' la the campy 1960s "Batman" TV series!! On the other hand, the film's production values - as is to be expected from a glossy studio product of its time - are tops.

Leonard Maltin strangely rates this one a BOMB in his "Movie Guide"; true, it may not be top-tier Kazan but it's nowhere near as bad as he seems to think it is. Curiously enough, I followed this viewing with the director's subsequent film, THE VISITORS (1972), also awarded the unenviable "bottom-of-the-barrel" accolade from the genial critic...though, in its case, it's a bit more understandable - as can be perceived from my own comments below!

A sort of precursor to American Beauty and other modern fillms about dissatisfaction, Kazan's The Arrangment is an interesting attempt to characterize a man's deconstruction. Kirk Douglas plays Eddie, an advertising executive coming to terms with his job, his family, and his life's direction. Kazan experiments with montage, split narrative, and time span as he tells the story of a man looking for something new in life. The result is a compelling and relevant story about modern happiness that is broken apart by bizarre construction and confusing shot arrangement. Kazan has some interesting ideas here, but not all of them work. His split-consciousness portrayal of Eddie is sometimes confusing and distracting, as is the switch between past and present. Douglas is good as the lead; I don't see why Kazan would have chosen Brando in retrospect as I don't think it would have made much of a difference. Overall, a film worth seeing if you're a Kazan-freak, but otherwise stick with Streetcar, Eden, or Waterfront..

Elia Kazan's 1969 midlife-crisis epic is an x-ray of American manhood gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Kirk Douglas, icon of tortured machismo, plays Eddie Anderson, son of a tyrannical Greek merchant (Richard Boone) turned Madison Avenue sell-out. He sleeps in childlike separate beds with his wife (Deborah Kerr), who looks and acts more like his mother. He's obsessed with the one woman (Faye Dunaway) who looks at his barbered, Lavoris'd self and sees the Man He Could've Been. The sixties satire of Organization Man is stock, the bombast beats thick and hard, and, as per usual, Kazan can't resist the Big Moments that are thoroughbred Hollywood hokum. But it's impossible to deny that this is as anguishedly personal as any of Kazan's movies--and the machete hacking through the brush that cleared the way for Cassavetes, Scorsese and Ferrara. With its mod, PETULIA-style sets, balletic editing and penchant for stylized tricks, it's also the most goofily cinematic of Kazan's pictures--a Sam Fuller whirligig turned into a slick, upscale thirty-second spot.