Faye Dunaway a commercial failure. In 1969, Dunaway appeared in "The Arrangement", a drama directed by Elia Kazan, based upon his novel of the same title, opposite Kirk Douglas. The film did poorly at the box office, receiving mostly negative reviews, although Dunaway was praised, with Roger Ebert writing that her acting "is not only the equal of in "Bonnie and Clyde", but is, indeed, the only good acting she has done since". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote that she was "looking so cool and elegant that the sight of her almost pinches the optic nerves". Also in 1969,
Faye Dunaway famed for a scene where Dunaway and McQueen play a chess game and silently engage in heavy seduction of each other across the board. Following the completion of "The Thomas Crown Affair", Dunaway began filming Vittorio de Sica's romantic drama, "A Place for Lovers" (1968), with Marcello Mastroianni, in which she played a terminally ill American fashion designer in Venice who has a whirlwind affair with a race car driver. Although Dunaway had always wanted to avoid romances with her co-stars, she began a love affair with Mastroianni that lasted for two years. The film was an artistic disappointment and