"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