- Director: Elia Kazan
- AMG Rating:
- Genre: Drama
- Movie Type: Melodrama
- Themes: Self-Destructive Romance, Infidelity, Midlife Crises
- Main Cast: Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Deborah Kerr, Richard Boone, Hume Cronyn
- Release Year: 1969
- Country: US
- Run Time: 126 minutes
Plot
Kirk Douglas has an extreme case of mid-life crisis in Elia Kazan's turgid melodrama (adapted from his best-selling novel). Douglas plays successful advertising executive Eddie Anderson, who cracks under the strain of the morning rush hour in Los Angeles and plows his sports car into a truck. Landing in a convalescent home, Eddie remains mute to everyone except his boss Finnegan (Charles Drake). In his recovery room, Eddie dreams about co-worker Gwen (Faye Dunaway), a sexy research assistant at his agency. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist Dr. Liebman (Harold Gould) talks to Eddie's wife, Florence (Deborah Kerr), who reveals that at one time Eddie and Gwen had an affair, but they broke it off. Unfortunately, after that escapade, Eddie's interest in sex vanished completely.Then after the interview with Dr. Liebman, following a terrible nightmare, Eddie breaks out of his self-imposed silence and declares to Florence that he is tired of his unfulfilling life of "arrangements." Eddie returns to work, but the return is marked by Eddie insulting a major client, alienating his co-workers, and then taking off in a private plane in which he flies madly over the skies of L.A. His lawyer Arthur (Hume Cronyn) keeps Eddie from being thrown in jail and also talks Eddie into giving Florence the power of attorney. Eddie proceeds to travel to New York, where he runs into Gwen, who now has a child. Eddie is in New York to visit his senile father, Sam (Richard Boone), but when his family attempts to put Sam in a nursing home, Eddie takes him away with him to their old family estate on Long Island. Eddie calls up Gwen, and she travels to Long Island to resume their affair. Meanwhile, Eddie's loved ones search for Sam, and they are closing in on Eddie's Long Island sanctuary. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
The Arrangement is a sloppy mess of a movie and will not be very rewarding to most viewers, despite the valiant and often successful efforts of its talented and noteworthy cast. Indeed, Kirk Douglas gives one of his most interesting and deeply felt performances, one which is especially eerie when compared with his son Michael's own midlife crisis/nervous breakdown film, Falling Down. Papa Douglas has the tougher job, as he has to make sense of Elia Kazan's splintered, turgid and often cliched screenplay, but he does very well indeed, showing the audience dark corners of the character's psyche with a fearlessness that is refreshing. Faye Dunaway, looking absolutely stunning, also clears Kazan's hurdles like a champion, and Deborah Kerr completes the main triangle with her poise totally intact. Among the supporting players, Richard Boone is fine as the father and Hume Cronyn does very well indeed. It would be nice if all this talent were in the service of a better project. Kazan's screenplay hops to disguise its triteness by the use of jumps in time, dream sequences and surrealistic moments, but all it does is make an annoying screenplay become very tiresome. As director Kazan seems to spend all his time placating his writing alter ego; the performances bear the mark of the master director, but the film is absent his ability to shape a film into a coherent, let alone involving, piece of cinema. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie GuideCast
- Kirk Douglas - Eddie Anderson
- Faye Dunaway - Gwen
- Deborah Kerr - Florence Anderson
- Richard Boone - Sam Anderson
- Hume Cronyn - Arthur
