Monday | August 17, 2009 7:00 pm

The Arrangement

Screening on Film

Directed by Elia Kazan.
With Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Deborah Kerr.
US, 1969, 35mm, color, 127 min.
Print source: UCLA

Kazan adapted his own best-selling autobiographical first novel into this complex and turbulent portrait of a prosperous Los Angeles ad man turned suddenly and irretrievably sour to his luxurious life, beautiful wife and giddily successful career. Kirk Douglas' manic, high-keyed portrait of a man desperate to escape his gilded cage is matched by the nervous pacing and experimental flourishes of Kazan's most avant-garde feature. The Arrangement offers both a harrowing portrait of mid-life malaise and a sunblinded vision of L.A. as a cauldron of 20th century anxieties.