Carnal Knowledge (1971)

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Directed by Mike Nichols.

Starring Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen, Art Garfunkel, Cynthia O'Neal, Jack Nicholson.

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"Maybe you're not supposed to like it with someone you love." With a script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge (1971) ruthlessly exposed the damage wrought by pre-1960s sexual mores. From their post-World War II college years at Amherst through the Vietnam era, buddies Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) are a catalogue of male sexual dysfunction. Sensitive Sandy falls in love with and marries college sweetheart Susan (Candice Bergen) only to wonder years later if he missed out on finding the perfect sex/love partner. Jonathan lives for aggressive sexual conquest (starting with Sandy's Susan in college), even as he rails against female "ballbusters," finally guilt-marrying his tiredly voluptuous mistress Bobbie (Ann-Margret, in an Oscar-nominated performance) after she tries to kill herself. By the late '60s, Sandy has moved on to a hippie chick girlfriend (Carol Kane) who can raise his consciousness about the sexual revolution, and Jonathan is single again, but Sandy is a little too old for the peace-and-love generation, and Jonathan bitterly faces emasculating impotence. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Young Adam: Fly on a tit
by jlgdrd in Wicked Fun

liked it.

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"Roughly two-thirds of the way into Young Adam we see the antihero, Joe, thrash, degrade and rape his girlfriend, Cathie, with revved up jazz playing in the background. Afterwards, he clearly regrets this sickening outburst: the most emotion his character has shown till that moment; most likely an outpouring of unconscious rage. Sadly, and consider for a moment the implications of this, it is the most engaging scene in the film. Like Carnal Knowledge’s Jonathan Fuerst and Damage’s Stephen Fleming, Joe is driven to compulsive, joyless sex. He skulks about, scowling, dressed like a thief or scavenger, usually clad in varying degrees of black. Early in the film we see him smeared in it from head to toe. The press kit describes Young Adam as a thriller, based, I suppose, on the discovery of a corpse at the outset of the film. It’s inevitable that publicists will find an angle to promote their product, but why settle for such a reductive gloss? It’s like calling T ... " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

liked it.

Pushing the limits of the still-young MPAA ratings system, Mike Nichols and Jules Feiffer approached Carnal Knowledge's emphatically adult subject matter with a then-shocking candor that was seen as at once a catharsis for the male filmmakers and an exposé of their generation. There are no happy endings for either idealist Sandy or predator Jonathan, as Nichols and Feiffer implicitly link their sexual values to male greed and solipsism. While critical opinion was split over whether Carnal Knowledge was a mature inquiry into America's dirty secrets or a slick, empty case study of pathology, audiences responded -- whether with cringing recognition or youthful pleasure at their elders' idiocy -- and the film became a hit. Even if its language and sex may no longer seem as controversial, Carnal Knowledge remains an acute dissection of male emotional infancy. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Tags: college , friendship , man , midlifecrisis , misogyny
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