Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

mrb1980 I guess "The Arrangement" has some merit-after all, it showcases late 1960s southern California quite well-but overall the movie is an all-star disaster due to its confusing structure and its incredibly muddled story.Los Angeles advertising executive Eddie Anderson (Kirk Douglas) has a nervous breakdown and tries to commit suicide by driving his sports car under a semi. The rest of the film flashes back to Anderson's childhood, his relationship with his dying father (Richard Boone, who was actually YOUNGER than Douglas), his deteriorating marriage with his wife (Deborah Kerr), and his torrid affair with a co-worker (Faye Dunaway). Along the way the flashbacks were very difficult to track and even harder to understand. Boone's character doesn't do much besides lie in bed, and Deborah Kerr chews the scenery as the cheated wife.I lost track of how many times the story flashed back, and I never did understand what the point of the movie was. The late 1960s time period touches were great, but otherwise I didn't really gain any understanding of the characters. Hume Cronyn, as Anderson's attorney, had about the only decent role in the whole film. If you decide to watch this mess of a film, be prepared for a lesson in confusion and expect to feel pretty empty afterward.

HotToastyRag Did you watch Strangers When We Meet? Kirk Douglas plays a married man, with no real reason to stray, who has an affair with Kim Novak. If you haven't, and you're thinking of watching The Arrangement, just watch the Kim Novak one instead. It's much better, and you'll get your Kirk Douglas fix. In this one, Kirk is married to Deborah Kerr, and just like before, he's successful in business, has lots of friends, a nice looking wife, and a beautiful house. And yet, in a mid-life crisis, or boredom, or whatever, he has an affair with Faye Dunaway.I don't really know why Faye Dunaway was continually cast in sex symbol roles; she's nice looking, but not particularly attractive. She always seems very untrustworthy to me, which is not an attractive quality-especially if you're going to have an affair with her and hope your wife doesn't find out! Anyway, since this film was made nine years after its competitor, there are more raunchy sex and nude scenes included, rather than just a few steamy kisses with Kim Novak. I don't like this movie, in part because the story is overdone, and in part because Elia Kazan's directing is purposely strange and outlandish, like he was trying to prepare the audience for the craziness of the 1970s. There are countless other infidelity movies for you to choose from, and I suggest you do so.DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not your friend. The camera often tilts, swirls, or zooms without warning, and it will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

elucidations How do you sugar-coat Cancer? Eddie Anderson (Kirk Douglas) does it by claiming the 'Zephyr' brand of cigarette (made by his ad company's million-dollar client) is CLEAN. Eddie has gotten rich by selling cigarettes, by selling Cancer (a word he goes out of his way to avoid saying), by saying cigarettes are CLEAN.That's why Eddie is unhappy, alienated, suicidal, and DIRTY.Elia Kazan (and yes, I too have conflicted feelings about the man) makes a film that shows an ad genius who gets rich and powerful, but he's guilt-stricken, and he takes himself down, even tries to take himself out.They still had cigarette advertising on radio and television back in 1969 (when this film was made), and you hear similar ads occasionally in this movie, extolling the pleasures and wonders of 'Zephyr' cigarettes, with copy written by Eddie Anderson himself... you heard those ads repeatedly, on Eddie's car radio, just before he drove his convertible sports car under the wheels of a tractor-trailer.It is a screed against advertising and selling cigarettes, wrapped in the mid-life crisis of a man who does just that, and it causes Eddie to walk away from his fabulously high-paying gig as an ad genius, in the process laughing right in the mortified faces of the cigarette company executives, telling them essentially "I can't do it anymore, I can't sell Cancer anymore."I give it nine stars, reluctantly taking one star away, due to what seemed a too fast narrative between the scene where Eddie has a serious and honest conversation in a hotel room with his wife (Deborah Kerr), which suddenly gets violent, and in the next scene he's appearing before an inquest of some kind, with his arm in a sling, and I wondered if he was hurt in the struggle with his wife, only to learn he was shot, TWICE, at the apartment of Gwen (Faye Dunaway), by the somewhat creepy Charles standing scarily in the shadows, followed shortly by a scene showing Eddie burning down his house.The speed of the narrative at that point almost gave me whiplash. I also thought it caught a little bit of the hip (hippie) look of the late sixties, primarily in Gwen's poster-decorated apartment.

secondtake 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.