Carnal Knowledge (1971) Drama Noir - The Dark Side of Sex

"An acerbic look at the sexual mores of men who came to maturity just after World War II." (Jon C. Hopwood)

You can say that again. 

Yes a very bitter look at a segment of a generation that had a warped view of sex (thanks in part to the MPPC and The Legion of Decency) in countless films since 1934. Written by a cartoonist Jules Feiffer.  

Luckily I was born when I was. I got to watch and experience the disintegration first hand. You can only bullshit people so long before they are going to bust loose and add in the Zeitgeist of the 60s. We were under the very real  Noir cloud of nuclear annihilation. If it felt good most of us did it. If it didn't most of us didn't.  

Jules Feiffer cartoons

Directed by Mike Nichols (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Closer).

Written by Jules Feiffer. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno (The Leopard, Fellini Satyricon, China 9, Liberty 37). Music by  Glenn Miller and His Orchestra,  Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra, and Frank Sinatra. 

Jack Nicholson as Johnathan and Art Garfunkel as Sandy

Candice Bergen as Susan

Ann-Margaret as Bobbie

Cynthia O'Neal as Cindy

Rita Moreno as Louise

The film Stars Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Ironweed, The Two Jakes) as Jonathan Fuerst, Arthur Garfunkel as Sandy, Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, The Hunting Party) as Susan, Ann-Margret (Kitten With A Whip) as Bobbie, Rita Moreno (Marlowe) as Louise, Carol Kane as Jennifer, Cynthia O'Neal as Cindy. 

The story is told in various time sequences.

Darkness. Night. Two college roomies discuss women in their room. Late 1940s. Jonathan is a future lady killer. He can talk to women easily but doesn't really respect them. He objectifies them. Thinks they are ballbusters, and teasers, He likes the big tit models. Sandy is the shy one. Timid and tongue tied around girls. He idolizes and romanticizes them. They both need to get laid. Basically, Jonathan is the bad boy, a jerk and Sandy is a nice guy but wimpy.

The Smith Amherst Mixer

Of course the nice guy meets Susan at a Smith - Amhurst mixer. Nichols shows this in a humorous sequence of Sandy walking over to break the ice. Susan is standing by a window. Sandy walks up closer to her. He loses his courage, stops and hesitates. Then goes and looks out the window saying nothing, all the while Susan is watching all this. He goes back to Johnathan who tells him he struck out and that it's his turn. Sandy tells him no, that he's got two more at bats. So he goes back over to Susan and the window and nonchalantly sits next to her. This time Susan breaks the ice by telling him that its such a phony way to meet people because they're all putting on acts.

Susan: I think people only like to think they're putting on an act, but it's not an act, it's really them. If they think it's an act, they feel better, because they think they can always change it.

Sandy: You mean, they're kidding themselves, because it's not really an act.

Susan: Yes, it is an act, but they're the act. The act is them.

Sandy:  But if it's them, then how can it be an act?

Susan: Because they're an act.

Sandy:  But they're also real.

Susan: No.

Sandy:  I'm not real?

Susan: No.

Sandy: I'm an act?

Susan: It's all right, I'm an act too.

Existential.

They click. Sandy and Susan start dating. Sandy discusses the various stages of the relationship with Susan to Jonathan. Sandy gives Jonathan the low down on their latest make out session. 

Sandy describes how everything changed after he asked her if she was a virgin and he confessed to her that it was his first time. He got to feel Susan up and she gave him a hand job. Johnathan is astonished.

She didn't do that!

We next see Jonathan calling up Susan and beginning to put the moves to her. Nice guy, horny guy.

 They go out on a date. Jonathan tries to break the ice with questions. Susan responds with questions.

Jonathan: Do you always answer a question with a question?

Susan: Do you always date your best friend's girlfriend?

Jonathan tells Susan that everybody talks in codes. They say one thing but mean another. He asks for another date. 

Later Sandy tells Jonathan the Susan thinks he's sensitive because he reads a lot of books. Jonathan laughs because he know he reads more books than Sandy. During Jonathan's next date with Susan he tells her about his messed up childhood. 

He's playing for her sympathy pushing the sensitive angle. Jonathan tells her he fought in the war to help the other people who have so little. She tells me she never though he was such a serious person. It's all to some extent bullshit.

Now Jonathan tells Sandy that he met a girl (he tells Sandy that Susan is this fictitious "Myrtle") that when he's around her he's a totally different person. 

We cut to Jonathan and Susan balling away out on a lawn somewhere. How Noir is that?

The next day Jonathan tells Sandy that Myrtle put out. Sandy calls bullshit on that, but finally believes him. We cut to to Sandy and Susan laying on Sandys dorm room bed. Sandy is trying to play hide the sausage but Susan is reluctant at first, but Sandy's insistence breaks her down. They do it. Quite a Noir femme this Susan 

The next day Sandy is bragging about him screwing Susan to Jonathan. Jonathan, we know why, tells him that he doesn't want to here it. Of course it all starts to go dramatically Noirsville when Jonathan demands that Susan break it off with Sandy. 

The film at this point time jumps to several years in time Sandy is married to Susan and their relationship has become boring. Jonathan is in a purely physical relationship with Bobbie a TV actress and that deteriorates once they shack up together. 

Noirsville

Nichols does a masterful job. The structure of Carnal Knowledge resembles the style of the frameless conversational construction and of monologs in closeups used in a lot of Feiffer's Village Voice cartoons. 

Rotunno's cinematography subtlety depicts the Noir tragedies that come from the wrong or misguided, but in good faith, choices of everyday living. 

The performances are great. From Nicholson it's expected, Ann-Margaret holds her own, but the surprises are from Candice Bergen, and Arthur Garfunkel who really deliver their characters. A Café au Lait Drama Noir. 8/10

"If anything, “Carnal Knowledge” is exploitative of men, not, heaven knows, as sex  objects, but as exploiters. It is a terrifying confession that might have been made on the analyst's couch." 

                                                                                                             (Vincent Canby NYT)