Product Details

• Actors: Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Deborah Kerr, Richard Boone, Hume Cronyn
• Directors: Elia Kazan
• Writers: Elia Kazan
• Producers: Elia Kazan, Charles H. Maguire
• Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: April 21, 1994
• Run Time: 125 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300269906
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #138,595 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

During 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

Product Description

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 Kerr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing & Dramatic Look At Consequences Of Life Choices!, August 26, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Arrangement [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Although director Elia Kazan ultimately failed in this uneven if brilliant attempt to bring his best-selling semi-autobiographical novel to the screen, it is a wonderful sociological portrait of a man driven to the edge of madness and despair by what material and career success does to his soul. Kirk Douglas is terrific as Eddie Anderson, the deeply conflicted Greek-American second-generation crossover who buys into the pursuit of American business success and now feels as though his talent and creativity have been totally corrupted and squandered in pursuit of the bitch goddess of success. He has it all, money, sex, and power, and all the toys and accessories such material success means. But his life is increasingly ashes in his mouth, a bitter, lonely, empty and unfulfilling existence that is literally driving Eddie insane.

We watch enraptured as he plunges head-first into a disastrous mid-life crisis, spiraling dangerously down the slippery slope toward madness and involuntary commitment, until slowly and painfully he begins to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it, although all this is obviously done at an amazingly hurtful and angst-filled cost to himself and his loved ones. Deborah Kerr co-stars as his loving but also self-concerned and controlling wife, and Faye Dunaway turns in a compelling performance as the insightful and sarcastic love interest who draws him out of his mid-life diversions and makes him see how expensive his sell-out has been to the real Eddie underneath all the glitz and glamour.

They say this movie had it all in the can, but that somehow author/producer/director Elia Kazan blew it all by cutting and editing it terribly, leaving it disjointed and hard-to-follow. Even though this seems to be true, the movie is uneven but still quite good, with a number of intense and moving scenes with Douglas, Dunaway, Kerr and Richard Boone that are among the best dramatic footage I have ever seen. Watch for the scenes late in the film when Eddie tries to explain himself and his actions to his wife, tryng to verbalize the very complicated reasons he simply cannot work at the ad agency any more. Although she coaxs him into the monologue, promising him she'll do "ANYTHING, god-dammit!" to make him happy, in the end she is quite conflicted, as well, and as a result totally misunderstands him, discounting his problems and conflicts and not hearing his plaintive pleas because she really doesn't want to give up their privileged lifestyle. He pours out his heart and needs, but she isn't listening, reacting angrily instead to what she sees as his selfishness even though she has begged him to be honest about what he really wants.

Such powerful scenes honestly and accurately document the terrible failed attempts at critical communication that too often characterize the destruction of life-long relationships and tragic divorce. Richard Boone of the TV series "Have Gun, Will Travel", an old Douglas friend and associate, also turns in a wonderful performance as Eddie's domineering and senile Greek-immigrant father, a once successful rug-importer who torments Eddie because he wants Eddie to bankroll him for another chance to control his own life. The way all this spins together was the powerful driving stuff behind a best-selling novel. The movie isn't quite as good, but it is still a wonderful, entertaining and powerful drama eminently worth watching.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transformation of a life -a masterpiece, August 13, 2000

By 

Alejandro Celis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arrangement [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In short, this movie shows how a man who's succesful and rich but lives in a permanent lie suddenly cracks up -in a very healthy way- and starts from scratch to re-evaluate his life: his job, his feelings toward his wife, his father, his lover. The confrontation between the establishment and someone who just wants to "live" -as he puts it- is brilliantly depicted. Elia Kazan's genius is very clear here. Very good acting from Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway and Deborah Kerr. I found interesting similarities between this movie and Peter Weir's Fearless.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, January 15, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arrangement [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Pay no attention to Lenny's review above. The Arrangement is brilliant, one of the best movies ever. Psychologically intense and somehow realistic and bizarre at the same time. Story, direction and Douglas are all great. But when is the DVD coming!