Never has a motion picture opened the pages of an international bestseller so frankly , so daringly, so shockingly, so brilliantly.


Kirk Douglas has an extreme case of mid-life crisis in Elia Kazan's turgid melodrama (adapted from his best-selling novel). Douglas plays successful advertising executive Eddie Anderson, who cracks under the strain of the morning rush hour in Los Angeles and plows his sports car into a truck. Landing in a convalescent home, Eddie remains mute to everyone except his boss Finnegan (Charles Drake). In his recovery room, Eddie dreams about co-worker Gwen (Faye Dunaway), a sexy research assistant at his agency. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist Dr. Liebman (Harold Gould) talks to Eddie's wife, Florence (Deborah Kerr), who reveals that at one time Eddie and Gwen had an affair, but they broke it off. Unfortunately, after that escapade, Eddie's interest in sex vanished completely. Then after the interview with Dr. Liebman, following a terrible nightmare, Eddie breaks out of his self-imposed silence and declares to Florence that he is tired of his unfulfilling life of "arrangements." Eddie returns to work, but the return is marked by Eddie insulting a major client, alienating his co-workers, and then taking off in a private plane in which he flies madly over the skies of L.A. His lawyer Arthur (Hume Cronyn) keeps Eddie from being thrown in jail and also talks Eddie into giving Florence the power of attorney. Eddie proceeds to travel to New York, where he runs into Gwen, who now has a child. Eddie is in New York to visit his senile father, Sam (Richard Boone), but when his family attempts to put Sam in a nursing home, Eddie takes him away with him to their old family estate on Long Island. Eddie calls up Gwen, and she travels to Long Island to resume their affair. Meanwhile, Eddie's loved ones search for Sam, and they are closing in on Eddie's Long Island sanctuary


The Arrangement is a 1969 film drama directed by Elia Kazan, based upon his 1967 novel of the same title.
It tells the story of a successful Los Angeles-area advertising executive of Greek-American extraction, Evangelos Arness, who goes by the professional name "Eddie Anderson." He is portrayed by Kirk Douglas.
Eddie is suicidal and slowly having a psychotic breakdown. He is miserable at home in his marriage to his WASPy wife, Florence, played by Deborah Kerr, and with his career. He is engaged in a torrid affair with the Faye Dunaway character, co-worker Gwen, and is forced to re-evaluate his life and its priorities while dealing with his willful and aging father (Richard Boone).
According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Kazan really wanted Eddie to be portrayed by Marlon Brando, who Kazan felt could bring a greater depth to the role and bring it close to the character portrayed in the novel and who had experienced great success with Kazan previously in the film On the Waterfront. However, Brando refused to take the role, stating that he had no interest in making a film so soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Kazan felt this to be a dodge on Brando's part and wondered if the real reasons had more to do with Brando's increasing weight or receding hairline