CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971)
After CATCH
22, Mike Nichols returned to the modern day but with equally challenging
material in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE from a screenplay by Jules Feiffer that was
originally intended as a play. It’s a very frank, adult depiction of sex and relationships
between men and women covering the college years to middle-age in the lives of
two best friends and how their attitudes to their needs define their future
happiness.
Art Garfunkel
is Sandy, the virginal, gauche one of the two. Jack Nicholson is Jonathan - who
even as an undergraduate talks a wise experienced game as though he is a master
seducer of women, lecturing his friend on what to do. Nicholson’s needs are shallower:
‘big tits’ attached to a nice body are really the vital pre-requisites. Garfunkel
is a shade more romantic and idealistic yet his nice-guy bourgeois blandness is
no more a guarantee of his later fulfilment than Nicholson’s wolfish bad-boy
promiscuity. Both men change partners during the film; their sexual history at
the start maps out their characteristic flaws – Garfunkel’s technique with
women is clumsy, impatient – whereas Jonathan has less morals. He seduces
Sandy’s girlfriend Susan (Candice Bergen) behind Sandy’s back, taking her
virginity before his friend and continuing to see her without his knowledge.
Into the second
act, by now Sandy has settled into dull domesticity while Jonathan has shacked
up with Bobbi, the curvy Ann Marget (whom he would later team up with again in
Ken Russell’s TOMMY). She is a model possessed of the looks, lack of inhibition
and big boobs that satisfy his simple cravings – however she is miserable and craves
marriage to give her life meaning. As she fails to please him or nourish
herself, she deteriorates into a drudgery of compensatory over-sleeping, their
sex life that was their only bond becoming moribund until eventually, uncared
for, she attempts suicide.
As the story
deepens and time passes, each man achieves career security, Jonathan as a
lawyer, Sandy as a doctor - but neither man’s maturity has extended to their constant
impulse to seek new, perceived better, partners. Sandy actually switches roles
with Jonathan, gradually seeing himself as the counsellor, encouraging Jonathan
to make a pass at his later girlfriend Cindy (Cynthia O’Neal) who proves more
than a match for Nicholson’s ‘player’ tactics.
As the ‘60s
end, female emancipation adds to Jonathan’s resentment of women, exacerbated by
his impotence. In the middle-aged conclusion, he presents Sandy and his latest
18 year-old partner Jennifer (Carol Kane) with a slide-show of his conquests
entitled ‘Ballbusters on Parade’ coupled with a sour running commentary.
Jennifer is offended so they leave. Jonathan is all-at-sea and apologises to
Sandy who is now full of modish encounter group pseudo-profundity for him, yet
lacks the self-awareness to see his own mid-life crisis in his choices of
women. Sandy calls Jennifer his ‘love teacher’ and crows about her beguiling
youthful wisdom compared to Susan, failing to realise this is just his version
of always looking for greener grass. Jonathan sees through his friend’s latest
transient state but at least Sandy seems to find pleasure. Jonathan is reduced
to paying experienced hooker Rita Moreno to recite well-rehearsed patter that
swells his ego and hopefully his penis every visit.
CARNAL
KNOWLEDGE is a brave and honest look at male and female sexual politics, which
earned some critical disapproval for its reflection of a new openness and
casuality about sex in modern western society. As in THE GRADUATE, Mike Nichols
shows great sensitivity with the cast in long exploratory takes, and artful
cinematography uses shadow to conceal the protagonists’ innermost conflicts
(such as Jonathan’s break-up ‘phone conversation in the hallway). An inciteful sign of the times…
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