People often say “That movie would never get made today,” and they especially like to tie that label to the films of the 1970s–as though that was the last era when filmmakers were allowed to be iconoclastic, provocative, and even overtly offensive in mainstream cinema. It’s a laughable idea for the most part, but whether the people who like this phrase use it or not, there’s a grain of truth in it, and Carnal Knowledge is a prime example.
You could not make this movie today. You could, of course, in a technical sense. Jules Feiffer’s script is out there, still simmering with ideas that are just as potent today as they were more than five decades ago. But as Criterion‘s beautiful new 4K restoration and disc release of the film reveals, this is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle movies, one that came along at the right time in 1971 and remains, in many ways, a timeless exploration of certain sexual and social mores. But you couldn’t really make Carnal Knowledge today, because you could never recapture the care, precision, and absolute honesty coming through Mike Nichols’ camera, as the Criterion release reminds us in more ways than one.
Set across a few key years in the lives of best friends Sandy (Art Garfunkel) and Jonathan (Jack Nicholson), the film is essentially a parlor piece, a series of conversations that unfold in bedrooms, at parties, in bars, and on city streets. It could easily be a stage play, but Nichols – and experienced stage director – doesn’t shoot it like one. Instead, he conjures up often jaw-dropping visual dynamism in these conversations, beginning with a fluid oner gliding through a party as Candice Bergen’s Susan enters the film, and continuing through compositions of immense depth and fluidity. Another director could have made the camera practically invisible, but Nichols forces you to pay attention to the way he’s moving things, the way he sets up shots, so you’re struck by moments of improbable tenderness and confrontational discomfort, like the moment when, mid-fight with his girlfriend Bobbie (Ann-Margret), Jonathan’s face shifts into sudden panic when he realizes someone just rang the doorbell.
With his characters established and their various intertwining sexual and emotional relationships off and running, Nichols feels free to experiment with the ways in which he can push the intimacy of each moment. In one scene, though they’re talking to each other, Sandy and Jonathan are shown speaking directly to the camera, eliminating not just the fourth wall but also the sense that we are outsiders in their conversation. In other sequences, he tightens focus even further, showing us Bobbie’s tousled post-sex hair as she sits upright in bed, contemplating a budding relationship with the damaged Jonathan, or keying into a towel on Jack Nicholson’s hip during one of his character’s many, many showers. The restoration for the Criterion release makes all of these moments pop, highlighting Nichols’ mission to make you confront the many ways in which these people, successful and beautiful though they are, are squirming in their own skins. It’s one of the most texturally intimate films ever made, and you get the feeling watching it now that the controversy the film inspired upon release was due not to its sex scenes but its uncompromising discussion of sex and relationships. It’s a film that puts you in bed with these people in ways few other films ever have.
The images within the 4K restoration make this clear, but it’s made even clearer by the special features, including commentary tracks and interviews with experts, all geared toward peeling back the layers of Nichols’ compositions, the performances he evoked, and the ways he played with Feiffer’s script. It’s all wonderful, but what drove things home for me was a conversation between Nichols biographer and film historian Mark Harris and film critic Dana Stevens, which provides immense context for the way the film played in 1971, how it plays now, and how the film pulls it all off.
We expect handsome packaging and lots of bonuses from Criterion discs at this point, but I can’t remember the last time I came away from one of these releases as enlightened and enthralled as I was by Carnal Knowledge. It is a film so determined to provoke deep, anxiety-stirring thoughts that it’s a wonder we aren’t discussing it all the time — and it never would have happened without the genius of Mike Nichols.
Carnal Knowledge is available now from Criterion in 4K and Blu-ray formats.
