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.

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.

The personnel in The Arrangement reminds me of the LA Lakers basketball team ( around the time this film was made) when they had Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor on the same squad. There were great expectations for a team with three superstars but they never jelled as a unit and were a dismal failure overall. Such is the case with Elia Kazan's The Arrangement, a crashing, sloppy out of touch melodrama of marital infidelity and despair.It would be hard to surpass the ten year run that Elia Kazan had a as film director from 1947-57. Just about everything he directed turned to gold and those that didn't then (Boomerang, Panic in the Streets, Face in the Crowd) have that respect today. In the early 60s he was still producing quality work (Splendor in the Grass, America,America) when he turned to writing a best seller (The Arrangement) eventually bringing it to the screen in the late sixties. Kazan, an actor's director if their ever was one and who translated the words and feelings of John Steinbeck and Tennessee Williams to film so well seemed to be at a loss with his own work and his ability to coax well measured performances out of his cast. Kirk Douglas, Deborah Kerr and Faye Dunaway are uniformly shrill from start to finish moping from one scene to another, making it hard to believe they could feel tenderness for anything. The scenes between Douglas and his mistress (Dunaway) lack intimacy and warmth, their passion forced. With his wife (Kerr) there is total detachment and not even a hint of why they got together in the first place. Kerr for her part seems like she's still in rehearsal. Lacking both sincerity and push she is badly miscast. Richard Boone as Eddie's overbearing old man adds to the disaster with complete over the top bombast, making a lot of noise and saying nothing that brings incite to the role.Having failed at what he does best (directing actors) Kazan goes on to embarrass himself further by employing some of the latest techniques (including Batman pop art) to be au courant in this heady era of American film but in his hands he fumbles. Even the highly regarded cinematographer, John Surtees flounders with sloppy camera movement and uninspired compositions. It's as if everyone attached to the making of the Arrangement suffered from talent amnesia. Kazan had certainly lost his touch and The Arrangement in one full swoop symbolized that decline. As a film director he had nothing left in the tank.

I wasn't expecting much out of the film, but wanted to see the performance of Dunaway and Kirk Douglas. Douglas indeed gives a very good performance and Dunaway is still gorgeous looking. The cinematography and backdrops are beautiful as well. I can tell a lot of work was put in those areas. Unfortunately that's about where it ends.Eddie Anderson (Douglas) suffers from a midlife crisis and takes on a mistress, Dunaway. There are quite a few problems with the film. The storytelling is convoluted and the method of telling it is very dry. The thing that bothers me the most are the jump cuts involving the mind of Eddie. You don't know whether he's is fantasizing about his relationship with Dunaway or whether it is merely a flashback. Other editing problems involve premature cutting of a scene. I do understand that the late sixties were very much an experimental age and a lot of today's advanced storytelling can be credited to films of that era. The Arrangement tries to comedic at times, but that doesn't work either. The acting is generally over the top, particularly that of Eddie's father who gives a horrid performance. In fact, few of the cast members really mesh. The dialog and delivery of lines is dated 50s cliché. It will put you to sleep. This bit of dialog at the end, with Faye and Eddie together, stuck out like a sore thumb: Faye's former lover burst in, shoots Eddie and says "I like you to". Kazan's career was coming to an end and this film showed it.