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Carnal Knowledge1971 \u2013 2.35:1 \u2013 98 Min.
Criterion \u2013 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Starring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen
Written by Jules Feiffer
Directed by Mike Nichols<\/p>\n
Carnal Knowledge
1971 \u2013 2.35:1 \u2013 98 Min.
Criterion \u2013 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Starring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen
Written by Jules Feiffer
Directed by Mike Nichols<\/p>\n
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Cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who passed away this year at the age of 95, spent a lifetime documenting the pratfalls of young men on the make. A regular at the Village Voice and (irony of ironies) Playboy, his dialog was revelatory and his jittery line work was angst personified. Running from the mid-50s to the 90s, those strips debuted under the titles Sick, Sick, Sick in the Voice and The Sick Little World of Jules Feiffer in Playboy. To get a handle on Feiffer\u2019s characters, it\u2019s best to refer to Psychology Today\u2018s analysis of Charlie Brown and Peanuts: \u201cProne to depression and anxiety and paralyzing fits of over-analysis.\u201d True to form, both strips featured regular visits to a psychiatrist.<\/p>\n
Mike Nichols and Elaine May mined some of that same territory in their groundbreaking nightclub appearances, and when Nichols turned to filmmaking he featured a nebbishy navel gazer who would not have been out of place in a Nichols and May skit\u2014it\u2019s easy to imagine May delivering the line that galvanized a generation, \u201cI want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Expert at a particular kind of dialog\u2014genial small talk simmering with barely disguised contempt\u2014Feiffer and Nichols were naturals for the theater. Feiffer\u2019s first full-length play was Little Murders (1967), a brutal satire about gun violence. Nichols\u2019 decades-long directing career began on the stage with 1963\u2019s The Knack and 1965\u2019s The Odd Couple, each production was more gentle in their approach than Feiffer\u2019s take-no-prisoners farce but with their own curdled views of the dating game. It seemed inevitable the two would collaborate and they broke out of the gate with guns blazing.<\/p>\n
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Carnal Knowledge was a cheeky title in more ways than one; though the film features endless chatter about fornication, actual insight into said sport is sorely wanting in its protagonists; a cruel ladies man named Jonathan Fuerst played by Jack Nicholson, and a shrinking violet named Sandy (his last name is unknown) played by Art Garfunkel. The women in these boy\u2019s lives\u2014their designated victims\u2014are Susan, an introverted Amherst grad played by Candice Bergen, and Ann-Margret as Bobbie, a bosomy actress almost famous for a series of airline commercials (stewardesses were the unofficial sex symbol for much of the 60s and 70s). Carnal Knowledge spans the late 40s to the early 70s, and you might assume the times they were a\u2019changin\u2019 but such is not the case for Jonathan and Sandy; intractable, inflexible, they remain fixed points in the never-ending war of the sexes.<\/p>\n
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Released in 1971, the film was manufactured to push buttons in a year swimming in controversy (other incendiary titles included A Clockwork Orange, The Devils, and Straw Dogs). Feiffer\u2019s script, like Jonathan and Sandy, treats Susan and Bobbie like batons in a relay race. Susan is introduced as an unknowable goddess and stays that way until she drops out of view never to be seen again. She\u2019s replaced by poor Bobbie and her boobs.<\/p>\n
Ann-Margret\u2019s chest is the fifth major character in the film; the solitary focus of Jonathan\u2019s desire, Bobbie\u2019s cleavage speaks volumes about Jonathan\u2019s skin-deep appreciation of the opposite sex. If Jonathan and Sandy are defined by their leering shallowness, the women are admired for their beauty and disdained for their lack of housekeeping skills. Feiffer is using a solipsistic approach to score his points but if the plan is for the audience to see these women through the men\u2019s eyes, we might wonder why Bergen and Ann-Margret have any dialog at all.<\/p>\n
Though much of the film is set in the past, it\u2019s hardly sentimental, rather it\u2019s defiantly anti-nostalgia. Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno\u2019s lighting indicates the different eras in subtle ways\u2014from the deep-toned walls of a college campus to the Kubrickian sterility of a 70\u2019s bachelor pad. Rotunno\u2019s discreet approach helps Nichols find a visual approximation of Feiffer\u2019s strips: Jonathan often addresses the camera head-on (you can practically see the word balloons) and those mini-monologues take on the defeated air of a confessional. But the conflict and comedy, Feiffer\u2019s m\u00e9tier, breaks loose in an explosive jeremiad aimed at Bobbie and performed by Nicholson, the wounded animal at the heart of Carnal Knowledge.<\/p>\n
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The actor uses his outburst in the diner scene from Five Easy Pieces as rocket fuel for Jonathan\u2019s tirade, a extraordinary litany of grievance, accusations, and punch lines that really feel like punches (\u201cYou want a job?! Try vacuuming!\u201d). At the end of that tongue-lashing Jonathan is spent, sinking into Bobbie\u2019s lap and \u201calmost\u201d asking for mercy, more exhausted than after a round of sex. For all intents and purposes the film is spent too.<\/p>\n
Though the movie\u2019s actual finale is a melancholy kiss-off featuring a depleted Jonathan and a beautiful sex worker played by Rita Moreno, as a condemnation of the human condition, Carnal Knowledge is pretty damn bleak. Those looking for a palate cleanser might turn to 1987\u2019s Diner which tackles the same themes but with an affectionate approach that leaves room for an ambiguously happy ending. To its credit, Barry Levinson\u2019s film embraces nostalgia like a long-lost lover, an emotion absent from Carnal Knowledge, for better and for worse.<\/p>\n
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