The Arrangement
by Elia Kazan
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Deborah Kerr, Faye Dunaway, Hume Cronyn, Kirk Douglas, Richard BooneDirector: Elia Kazan
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Robert Surtees
Producer: Elia Kazan
Writer: Elia Kazan
Editor: Stefan Arnsten
Producer: Charles H. Maguire
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 125 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-01-30
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Arrangement
Movie Review: Kazan's Legacy Captured on Film
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Arrangement" was much maligned by the critics in its day. But this film is so prophetic for those of us of a certain generation: we who had to choose between the status quo and following our bliss. I saw this film during the spring of my senior year in college. I went with two friends--one hated "The Arrangement" and two of us were so moved that we could barely speak about it. Very soon after, I chose my bliss and had one of the most dramatic, tragic and yet most creatively satisfying lives of anyone I know. I survived so much--social upheavel and sexual revolution, Est and meditation, all of which finally led me to Jung at a time much like that of "The Arrangement's" protagonist, so expertly mirrored in Kirk Douglas's portrayal. If you still have any sense of the adventure and absurdity of life or if you're just arriving at adulthood confused as to how choose your life's road and work, this powerful film is for you. Although it is an American big-studio project, it has the feel of Fellini, Antonionni and French new wave, all filmed by the great Surtees. If you can take the time to sit down and let "The Arrangement" wash over you, I promise you will come cleansed, a better person with questions to answer and answers to some of your lifelong questions.
Summary of The Arrangement
Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway in master moviemaker Elia Kazan's hard-hitting story about an adman's attempts to rebuild his shattered life after suffering a nervous breakdown. Year: 1969 Director: Elia Kazan Starring: Kirk Douglas Faye Dunaway Deborah KerrRunning Time: 125 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085391111986 Manufacturer No: 111198During the grim, glum cacophony of images and sounds that constitutes the first few minutes of The Arrangement, a self-loathing advertising wizard (Kirk Douglas) with a stultifying marriage and a career focused on selling "Zephyr, The Clean Cigarette!" impulsively hits upon a spectacular method of committing suicide. Viewers would have been spared two hours of further flailing if he'd succeeded. Instead we get a combination psychodrama and Bildungsroman--at once crashingly obvious and fragmented to the point of incoherence--that attempts to frame the betrayal of the American Dream through the guilty/proud machismo, professional frustrations, and oppressive ethnic heritage of a very unappealing guy.
At least credit writer-director Elia Kazan, adapting his own bestselling novel, with honesty: the guy is, essentially, he himself. The once-great filmmaker hoped to reunite with Marlon Brando on the project; he wound up with Douglas, whose career-long image was the guy with the indomitable spirit no matter what ("I'm Spartacus!"). But dismay over Douglas's miscasting--which led to the miscasting of Faye Dunaway in a mistress role based on and intended for Barbara Loden--doesn't excuse the total mishmash. Scenes begin in the middle or break off without warning; some characters are introduced portentously, then abandoned or beaten as one-note Symbols. The technique is a mélange of ugly, puerile effects, including still photos absurdly sprung to life and a daydream sequence studded with BIFF! BAM! POW! comic-book titles. There's even a desperate dive into self-quotation, a snippet of Kazan's 1963 America America to establish that a character barely seen in The Arrangement is the aged version of the youthful protagonist of that exultant masterpiece.
For the record, the cast includes Deborah Kerr as Douglas's wife and Richard Boone as his terminally Old World dad. They didn't deserve to come off as badly as they do. --Richard T. Jameson
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