Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) At first blush, The Arrangement seems to be about a middle-aged man who's juggling two women in his life, a wife and a mistress. You know, they all have an "arrangement." But it's much more of an existential, mid-life-crisis movie. Kirk Douglas stars as ad exec Eddie Anderson who has an epiphany after wrecking his car in a New York City tunnel, leading him to reevaluate his priorities. Deborah Kerr stars as his wife, Florence, and Faye Dunaway is the iconoclastic girlfriend, Gwen.Told from Eddie's point of view, the film moves back and forth between the present and various earlier moments in the man's life, including his childhood as the son of a Persian rug dealer (Richard Boone) and his earlier days at the ad agency, where he meets Gwen, a looker whose opinions are valued by the company's president. Eddie is, by the present day and according to him, locked into a strict course of by-the-book, humdrum listlessness. Although the movie doesn't use the specific phrase, Eddie wants to drop out of society - this during a time in real life when people were doing exactly that. (It was the late 1960s, after all.) A year prior to the release of The Arrangement, Douglas' best buddy Burt Lancaster appeared in a similar movie, called The Swimmer. That one was based on a John Cheever story; The Arrangement is based on director Elia Kazan's own best-selling novel, which was widely panned by critics. As was the movie adaptation - some thought that Douglas' performance was a little flat and superficial. I think that's nonsense. Douglas is terrific in a very meaty role. But even better than Kirk Douglas are his two leading ladies. Dunaway is unforgettable as the independent Gwen; this was about two years after her breakthrough role in Bonnie and Clyde, so it was a bit of a boon to get her on board. She knocks this role out of the park. And Kerr, who had been making movies for a couple of decades but looked every bit as lovely and elegant as an ingenue. Hers, like Dunaway's and Douglas's, is also a multilayered role.

nomoons11 The acting and directing in this was just fine. Typical Kazan effort but the main issue with this is...the story. It's just to jumbled up and leaves too much undone at the end.The simplest synopsis I could give of this film is a guy decides to try and kill himself by driving under a semi truck...he fails. After this we go through his past life and figure out why he's had enough of his life. We find out a year before a pretty serious affair ended and this was part of the reason for the failed suicide. The other is a few things. He seems to have turned out just like his father...whom deep down...he despises. Also, he's just had enough of the life he leads. He wants a change or to just getaway from it all. I guess a mid life crisis.Throughout all this you'll get to meet his father, who is dying, and we learn that he was miserable to his wife and kids and everyone is still afraid of him. We get to see a little of his father in himself and what his family life is like. He tries desperately to get back with the girl who had a previous affair with. He loves her but I think he gets more out of her telling him like it is whereas his wife just lets things be and keeps silent...like his mother did with his father. He appreciates her for this. The girlfriend in this is not exactly a saint in this one to say the least.By the end you'll have a mixed bag of feelings on this one. The end leaves too many things left undone. All in all a good effort but needed more filler for the story. Kazan's book on this one may have been a hit but I don't think it translated well to the screen. I know that films don't all have to have answers or to have happy endings but this needed a closure to the circumstances of the many people involved. All we get is a funeral scene and a lot of assumptions. Maybe that was the intention. Maybe a mid life crisis and all involved is supposed to be....incomplete.

islumdog This movie was ahead of its time. The scenes presaged Pulp Fiction and The Boondock Saints. Forty years later the pop culture elements provide a very interesting commentary on times past. And of course, Richard Boone, a truly fine actor, was one of the major reasons I like this movie so much. The idea of living out a relationship primarily in one's head reminds me also of Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Note that the license plate of Eddie Anderson's (Kirk Douglas) sports car is JJZ-106. That's 3 ticks away from Lt. Bullitt's (Steve McQueen) plate in the famous chase sequence, which was JJZ-109. I tried to get JJZ-109 as a Gmail address, but it was taken. (So was the Dodge Charger's plate in the Bullitt chase sequence.) Apparently, Warner Brothers got a series of plates for its company cars.

bkoganbing Elia Kazan may have bared his tortured soul in this autobiographical novel, but someone else was needed to bring it to the screen. Then again I'm not sure anyone could have made an entertaining film out of so dislikeable a subject.The Arrangement is ostensibly Elia Kazan telling his story of his relationship with a tyrannical father which is the root cause of the middle aged angst he now faces. Our protagonist is not a celebrated film director, but Kirk Douglas a rich and successful advertising executive who one fine day decides to go out in the way that Princess Diana did.It was not as fatal as poor Diana's crash. But all through this film you kind of wish he'd been put out of his misery. This man is selfish beyond all comprehension, narcissistic to the last exponent. Kirk Douglas has played some pretty rotten people on the screen, but even the cold blooded bank-robber/killer he played in his next film, There Was A Crooked Man, had far more going for him than this one.He's married to Deborah Kerr who was coming up short with decent film roles in the latter part of the Sixties. She's the long suffering wife in this one and initially you feel sorry for her. But after a while I got the impression she was just glorying in her martyrdom as the long suffering wife. Douglas even knocks up his mistress Faye Dunaway and even after she gives birth and the child is thrown in her face, she won't leave him.What she'd rather do is scheme with family lawyer Hume Cronyn and family doctor Harold Gould to get Douglas sent to the booby hatch. Not that he isn't giving them all plenty of good reason.Richard Boone is Douglas's father and he blusters and shouts his way through the part the Anthony Quinn does in his more bravura roles. Kazan didn't have a tight rein on the cast. Or perhaps they knew this film was a travesty and each was determined to overact and be noticed the most.Not the finest hour for all the talented people involved.