Carnal Knowledge 4K

Carnal Knowledge
1971 – 2.35:1 – 98 Min.
Criterion – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Starring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen
Written by Jules Feiffer
Directed by Mike Nichols

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’s characters, it’s best to refer to Psychology Today‘s analysis of Charlie Brown and Peanuts: “Prone to depression and anxiety and paralyzing fits of over-analysis.” True to form, both strips featured regular visits to a psychiatrist.

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—it’s easy to imagine May delivering the line that galvanized a generation, “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.”

Expert at a particular kind of dialog—genial small talk simmering with barely disguised contempt—Feiffer and Nichols were naturals for the theater. Feiffer’s first full-length play was Little Murders (1967), a brutal satire about gun violence. Nichols’ decades-long directing career began on the stage with 1963’s The Knack and 1965’s The Odd Couple, each production was more gentle in their approach than Feiffer’s 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.

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’s lives—their designated victims—are 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’changin’ but such is not the case for Jonathan and Sandy; intractable, inflexible, they remain fixed points in the never-ending war of the sexes.

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’s 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’s replaced by poor Bobbie and her boobs.

Ann-Margret’s chest is the fifth major character in the film; the solitary focus of Jonathan’s desire, Bobbie’s cleavage speaks volumes about Jonathan’s 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’s eyes, we might wonder why Bergen and Ann-Margret have any dialog at all.

Though much of the film is set in the past, it’s hardly sentimental, rather it’s defiantly anti-nostalgia. Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s lighting indicates the different eras in subtle ways—from the deep-toned walls of a college campus to the Kubrickian sterility of a 70’s bachelor pad. Rotunno’s discreet approach helps Nichols find a visual approximation of Feiffer’s 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’s métier, breaks loose in an explosive jeremiad aimed at Bobbie and performed by Nicholson, the wounded animal at the heart of Carnal Knowledge.

The actor uses his outburst in the diner scene from Five Easy Pieces as rocket fuel for Jonathan’s tirade, a extraordinary litany of grievance, accusations, and punch lines that really feel like punches (“You want a job?! Try vacuuming!”). At the end of that tongue-lashing Jonathan is spent, sinking into Bobbie’s lap and “almost” asking for mercy, more exhausted than after a round of sex. For all intents and purposes the film is spent too.

Though the movie’s 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’s Diner which tackles the same themes but with an affectionate approach that leaves room for an ambiguously happy ending. To its credit, Barry Levinson’s film embraces nostalgia like a long-lost lover, an emotion absent from Carnal Knowledge, for better and for worse.

Featured on Criterion’s beautiful new Blu ray set for Carnal Knowledge are film critic Dana Stevens, and Mark Harris, the author of a fine biography of Nichols, who suggest a few playful, slightly serious interpretations of the characters; are Jonathan and Sandy suppressing gay yearnings? Has Jonathan dreamed Sandy up as a metaphysical sounding board (he has no last name, remember)? That speculation is just part of a larger, just plain fun dissection of the Nichols/Feiffer film. Another extra features filmmaker Jason Reitman in an appropriately fawning interview with Nichols from 2011 organized by the FilmForum.

The disc comes in both 4K and standard Blu ray editions and the 4K brings out Giuseppe Rotunno’s delicate colors and careful lighting. It feels like a psychological approach, with characters often isolated or nearly isolated in dark or light spaces; the extra contrast of 4K reveals Rotunno’s mastery of detail. Other extras include a new audio commentary featuring filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute, an interview with film-editing historian Bobbie O’Steen, and a chat with screenwriter Jules Feiffer. Inside the keep case is a new essay by scholar Moira Weigel and a 1971 article from American Cinematographer about the look of the film.