Carnal Knowledge

Its a wry, often funny, often sombre drama about the sex lives of two college roommates, Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel (who's actually fine in this - much better than in Catch-22) - at college, and in middle age.

There are really very few movies where the dialogue seems so true and searching, yet funny, that you hang on every word. I can only think of a few - and this is one of them.

It is episodic, and may be broken into two halves - intentionally, importantly. The heart of the story is in the comparison of the first half and the second: how the two men have or have not changed. If you consider this is the purpose of the film, the two halves are not perfect - but nevertheless a fascinating film.

Bitterness, nostalgia and melancholy run through this character comedy from the 70's. Its a frank, confronting (depending on the viewer) laying bare of sex. Though there is very little actual sex in the film, this one is definitely only for adults. A penetrating character study, and a richly worded film filled with wit, irony and character penetration by cartoonist Jules Feiffer.

9/10. Not perfect, but absolutely must-see.

For the first half hour the characters are so disgusting and terrible, the feeling of bile rising in my throat doesn't subside. These are the people who I have known. And while I cannot bring myself to turn it off, I also can't help but fondly remember watching all of his movies that he made before this one, the spark that say The Graduate or Catch-22 had, and this just feels a little flat. But at the same time, it seems to completely succeed in doing what it sets out to do, creating something suffocatingly real, like watching the most depressing moments in my life played back for me with dim lighting and blonder actresses. The fact that Candice Bergen goes away after that also helps. Upper middle class ennui is something that's almost always tedious to watch, but this is actually affecting. Nonetheless, this feels like the beginning of the end for Mike Nichols. He would never again make anything on a level with Catch-22, and he followed this one up with Day of the Dolphins. Seriously. wtf. Also for the curious, pop star Arthur Garfunkle (as the back of the DVD box puts it) gives a surprisingly strong performance in this.

"Carnal Knowledge" (1971) directed by Mike Nichols with Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret in an Oscar nominated performance as a sex kitten who wants to marry Nicholson's Jonathan, and Carol Kane and Rita Moreno in the small roles is one of the movies that made 70s so memorable. It is also the movie that keeps reminding me why I love Jack Nicholson of his early years and how grand he was without his "Jackness" which he has developed during all these years. Sandy (Garfunkel) and Jonathan are two college friends and like every straight young (and not too young) man in the world they are obsessed by girls and move from one relationship to another in the course of almost thirty years. Nichols and Jules Feiffer who wrote the play and later adapted it for the screen let us look inside the minds and souls of two educated upper-middle class white males and to learn their very intimate thoughts and secrets concerning their plentiful dysfunctional and joyless affairs and it is not a pretty picture - "Boys begin life not liking girls, later they don't change, they just get horny." The film is honest, uncomfortable, "very slick, very clever".

Telling the sordid, often depressing story of two men and their sexual hangups over several decades, director Mike Nichols and writer Jules Fieffer concoct a thinking man's dirty movie. At times it's not easy to watch, but it's mostly entertaining and beautifully made. Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel are the men ---Nicholson is the callous, emotionally detached one, Garfunkel is the romantic. He marries college sweetheart Candice Bergen, while Nicholson shacks up with sexy Ann-Margret. The scenes with Nicholson and Ann-Margret are cringe-inducing. Nicholson, Garfunkel and Bergen are terrific and Nichol's clever casting of Ann-Margret, putting her sex kitten image through the blender, pays off in spades...she's the best thing in the movie. The supporting cast includes Carol Kane and Rita Moreno.

"Carnal Knowledge": A DVD Movie Review

This fascinating film, crafted in 1971 directed by Mike Nichols, is a product of the American sexual repression of it's time. Banned in many venues, this did not deter this movie from becoming an American classic. It explores the dysfunction of American sexual relations of the time.

This film is so well written, so well directed, and so magnificently acted, that to watch it, provokes great introspection. The subject matter is that of the title. It is the story of four people's journey through human friendship and sexual relations that is profound and significant.

The weaving in and out of these relationships between these four people is mesmerizing. The movie starts with a college roommate relationship between two young men, draws in a mutual love affair, and through these friend's professional careers, compares and contrasts, the normal family man's constant blase sexual life, with the playboy's, at first exciting affairs, then his degradation into impotence. It is a very sad story.

The script is presented in the first person, with the two male characters telling their stories, to whit the two female characters provide the emotional foil that reflects upon the male's soliloquies. The characters in this film provide a tour-de-force in the acting of the human heart.

The two male stars of this movie, Jack Nicholson, and Art Garfunkel are really good in their rooting of this movie. They are in some ways the center. But their masculine performances really take a second seat to the two female stars.

In the first part of the film Candace Bergen as Susan is almost breathtaking in her portrayal of the perfect sorority girl who has to choose between compassion and passion. She chooses compassion over the emotional doom of her passionate boyfriend. This crux of relationships is the focus of this film. The man chosen by the perfect Susan lives a life of boredom and order, with underlining sadness, but yet a sort of satisfaction.

The passionate man that Susan left behind, is a sad product of the cynicism of the free love and sexuality of the time. And this lost man takes up with the ultimate tragic female film character's cheese cake Bobbie, who's characterization by the red haired ultra voluptuous Ann-Margaret, is perhaps the most heart wrenching and beautiful portrayal of a tragic female heroine of emotion ever put on the silver screen.

In the end this film is the tragedy of the sexual mediocrity of everyday life and the failure of those that attempt the provocative. This is a great film, the DVD widescreen transference, necessary for it's back and forth conversational scenes, is first rate. This classic Adult film is recommended and costs practically nothing these days on the internet market.

B. A. Draper