‘The Arrangement’ is a big, lumbering, overwrought and self-indulgent mess and the start of the disappointing, downward spiral of Elia Kazan’s career.
Long after his masterpieces ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ ‘On the Waterfront,’ and ‘Baby Doll,’ Kazan decides to adapt his own novel to the screen with no small amount of pretension, and armed with a jumbled narrative in which Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway and Deborah Kerr do all they can to transcend.
We open with Eddie Anderson (Kirk Douglas) waking up in a separate bed from his wife, Florence (Deborah Kerr) in a nice Los Angeles home. They go about their morning duties and he leaves for work as his wife wave’s goodbye. Getting onto the jumbled, traffic-ensnared highway, he changes the radio station frequently and finds his created ad campaign for Zephyr cigarettes. His face doesn’t register whether this pleases him or not but his following actions seem to hint at a clue. As he’s driving along between two semis, he suddenly lurches his car underneath one.
The rest of the film analyzes the aftermath of this decision and what led to it with the majority of the fault falling on his young lover Gwen (Faye Dunaway) who left him when she finally got tired of waiting for him to leave his wife. Completely in love with her (and who wouldn’t be), he couldn’t get himself to leave his faithful, loyal wife. And while this love triangle was playing out, he also had to deal with the impending death of his father (Richard Boone) and the domestic issues with his parents that still haunt him all the while feeling like he didn’t choose the right direction for his life.
He’s successful financially, hawking cigarettes for a 5 million dollar client within his ad agency but he feels restless for not chasing his dreams of being a writer. He’s empty spiritually if not materially. This was a lot of emotional weight he was carrying so he made a rash decision that suicide was the only viable escape from his woes.
The script is a ponderous, bleak affair that really tries to hit the viewer over the head with its importance, which is not to say that the whole film is a complete failure. There are intriguing concepts here and admirable attempts at something to say about the age-old theme of the male mid-life crisis and the male’s response to how his life may or may not be going in the right direction but it’s ultimately so heavy-handed that most will have given up on caring about this character long before it’s over.
The performances of Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway were generally well-received by critics upon release of the film (but torn apart everywhere else) but I have to disagree. Deborah Kerr’s subtle take on the material was the best way to approach it and she easily outshined everyone else in the film. Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway seemed to resort to a steady stream of histrionics and hysterics to try and rise above the stolid, static tone of how Kazan captured the film which resulted in a lot of screaming and roaring with very little effect.
A quieter take would have been preferred and indeed Kazan himself later expressed disappointment with Douglas’s performance who initially wanted Marlon Brando for the role. Brando agreed to the film but backed out after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in which he claimed he couldn’t continue with the film in light of such a tragedy. It would have been fascinating to see what Brando would have done with the role but impossible to know if this would have been a role he took seriously or if it would have been mired in his ever-increasing eccentricities.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen and is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Special features include a short, vintage featurette “A New Lifestyle” and the films theatrical trailer.
Cinephiles and fans of Elia Kazan will want to check the film out on a purely completist or historical level but casual viewers will be left out in the cold and more than likely come away despising the film if their able to finish the film at all. A film with elements to admire but it’s without a question a slog to watch and ultimately a failure, especially judging on Kazan’s terms.
The Arrangement is now available at Amazon . As of yet, this version of the DVD is not available in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
Your Talkback on this Story