Main Cast: Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Cynthia O'Neal
Release Year: 1971
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
"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
Review
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
Robert Luthardt - Art Director, Clive Reed - Associate Producer, Anthea Sylbert - Costume Designer, Richard Portman - First Assistant Director, Mike Nichols - Director, Sam O'Steen - Editor, Joseph E. Levine - Executive Producer, Richard Sylbert - Production Designer, Giuseppe Rotunno - Cinematographer, Mike Nichols - Producer, George R. Nelson - Set Designer, Lawrence O. Jost - Sound/Sound Designer, Jules Feiffer - Screenwriter
Sandy (Art Garfunkel) and Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) are collegeroommates whose lives are explored and seem to offer a contrast to one another. Spanning a 25-year period, from their college years in the mid-1940s to middle aged adulthood in the early 1970s, the film explores their various relationships with various women (played by Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Carol Kane, Cynthia O'Neal, and Rita Moreno).
A review of the film which appeared in the Saturday Review by Hollis Alpert was later quoted in a legal proceeding as follows:[1]
"[It is basically a story] of two young college men, roommates and lifelong friends forever preoccupied with their sex lives. Both are first met as virgins. Nicholson is the more knowledgeable and attractive of the two; speaking colloquially, he is a burgeoning bastard. Art Garfunkel is his friend, the nice but troubled guy straight out of those early Feiffer cartoons, but real. He falls in love with the lovely Susan (Candice Bergen) and unknowingly shares her with his college buddy. As the "safer" one of the two, he is selected by Susan for marriage.
"The time changes. Both men are in their thirties, pursuing successful careers in New York. Nicholson has been running through an average of a dozen women a year but has never managed to meet the right one, the one with the full bosom, the good legs, the properly rounded bottom. More than that, each and every one is a threat to his malehood and peace of mind, until at last, in a bar, he finds Ann-Margret, an aging bachelor girl with striking cleavage and, quite obviously, something of a past. "Why don't we shack up?" she suggests. They do and a horrendous relationship ensues, complicated mainly by her obsessive desire to marry. Meanwhile, what of Garfunkel? The sparks have gone out of his marriage, the sex has lost its savor, and Garfunkel tries once more. And later, even more foolishly, again."[2]
Legal problems
The changes in the morals of American society of the 1960s and 1970s and the general receptiveness by the public to frank discussion of sexual issues was sometimes at odds with local community standards. A theatre in Albany, Georgia showed the film. On January 13, 1972, the local police served a search warrant on the theatre, and seized the film. In March 1972, the theatre manager, Mr. Jenkins, was convicted of the crime of "distributing obscene material". His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of Georgia. On June 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court would find that the State of Georgia had gone too far in classifying material as obscene in view of its prior decision in Miller v. California, 413 U.S.15 (1973) (the Miller standard), and would overturn the conviction.[3]Jenkins v. Georgia, 418 U.S.153 (1974). The court also said that,
“
Our own viewing of the film satisfies us that Carnal Knowledge could not be found … to depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way. Nothing in the movie falls within … material which may constitutionally be found … "patently offensive" … While the subject matter of the picture is, in a broader sense, sex, and there are scenes in which sexual conduct including "ultimate sexual acts" is to be understood to be taking place, the camera does not focus on the bodies of the actors at such times. There is no exhibition whatever of the actors' genitals, lewd or otherwise, during these scenes. There are occasional scenes of nudity, but nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene… Appellant's showing of the film Carnal Knowledge is simply not the "public portrayal of hard core sexual conduct for its own sake, and for the ensuing commercial gain" which we said was punishable…
The movie was used in an episode of The Wonder Years in Season 5, with the same title.
On an episode of All in the Family, Archie and Edith return home looking somewhat distraught. Edith says "I thought it was a religious movie, with a title like Cardinal Knowledge." Archie responds "I had to tilt my head to watch it" and calls the film "hardpore cornography".
