L'arrangement

In recent years I have come to reevaluate most of Elia Kazan´s films. "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) looks more and more the stagebound it is and belongs rather to its actors than to its director. "On the Waterfront" first of all is an elaborated excuse for informing (something Kazan had done some years earlier in front of the HUAC). "America, America" (1963) is the sort of tale immigrants who have made it tend to tell at family gatherings over and over again. On the other hand "Panic in the Streets" (1950) now emerges as a powerful thriller about paranoia. "The Visitors" (1972) - more or less a home movie - is a painfully depiction of America´s guilt with regard to the Vietnam War and as such much ahead of its time (most certainly much ahead of Brian De Palma´s "Casualties of War" (1988), that tells are rather similar story). The most astonishing film being "The Arrangement" (1969), a film that has been dismissed that often as a downright bomb that this verdict was taken for granted for a very long time. Well, it´s high time for a change.

"The Arrangement" deals with an advertising executive´s alienation from his job, his family, his world and even from himself. This Eddie Anderson is one of Kirk Douglas´s most touching and least mannered performances. He manages to keep the audience interested in a guy who is lost in almost every sense of the word. A gripping psychodrama, a film for adults and therefore out of place even at a time when traditional Hollywood was blown away by America´s very own New Wave. "The Arrangement" may at times annoy you, but it won´t insult your intelligence for even that long as a second. Cudos to the director, Kirk Douglas and both Richard Boone and Deborah Kerr who gave two performances to crown their already sterling careers. Faye Dunaway, by the way, has never before and never since been that erotic on screen.