L'arrangement

Elia Kazan made "The Arrangement" in 1969 after having first published it as a novel. It's a difficult film but ultimately a rewarding one. It begins along the lines of a rather heavy-handed satire on consumerism before turning into a very late sixties psychodrama about a mid-life crisis which Kazan chooses to film in the fractured style of a European art-movie. The central character is Eddie Anderson, (not his real name; he changed it from the original Greek), and from flashbacks we are lead to believe he's the son of the boy from "America, America" who has now become Richard Boone. The film opens with Eddie's bizarre suicide attempt when he drives his sports car under the wheels of a truck and as it moves forward, to some kind of redemption. It also keeps skipping back to the events in Eddie's past that have lead up to that moment when he felt his life was no longer worth living. Kirk Douglas plays Eddie superbly, in what is really a very difficult role. His long-suffering wife is an equally superb Deborah Kerr, mixing acidity and sweetness to an almost alarming degree as she tries to comprehend what it is that's driving her husband. In the role of Eddie's mistress Faye Dunaway is less successful simply because her character is too much of a contradiction; she seems to undergo a complete change of personality. However, there's fine work from Hume Cronyn as Eddie's slimy lawyer and Boone is splendid as the gruff, seemingly uncaring father. The movie itself wasn't a success and critics were heavily divided, many feeling that Kazan had stepped outside of his comfort zone and had largely failed. However, the magazine 'Films and Filming', a bible of British film criticism at the time, selected it as the year's best film from any source. It was hardly that but it is still Kazan's last really good movie, an utterly essential part of one of the great canons of work in world cinema and it certainly shouldn't be missed if you get the chance to see it.