Having won acclaim and an Oscar for directing The Graduate in 1967, Mike Nichols soon moved
on to bigger projects. The first, an ambitious adaptation of Joseph Heller’s
darkly comic anti-war novel, Catch-22,
got mixed reviews. For the second, Nichols returned to the funding source
(Joseph E. Levine’s Embassy Pictures) and the subject matter (love and sex)
that had worked so well for The Graduate.
Carnal Knowledge, released in 1971, represents a fascinating follow-up to the
affairs of a young man named Benjamin Braddock, who looks to sex to solve all
his problems.
Carnal Knowledge,
scripted by the ultra-hip Jules Feiffer, starts with not one young man but two.
At the film’s beginning, as they yak about girls in their dorm room, they’re a
long way from graduation. Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (a surprisingly
effective Art Garfunkel) are callow Amherst freshmen, and their discussion of
sex is purely theoretical. But college life, post World War II, brings its
rewards. Sandy is soon head over heels about the smart, savvy Susan (Candice
Bergen), a Smith freshman with dreams of law school. Touched by his sweet naiveté,
she permits him some . . er . . .
liberties. But it’s Sandy’s bolder roommate, Jonathan, who gets her in the
sack.
We jump ahead to about 1960. Sandy is now a busy doctor,
with Susan as his homemaker wife. He describes their life together as idyllic,
but he’s secretly looking to get laid by someone new and exciting. Jonathan, a
financier, has been playing the field, but the voluptuous Bobbie (a sizzling
Ann-Margret) seems exactly what he craves. As he puts it, “Believe me, looks are everything.”
You should be careful what you wish for. In short order,
Sandy’s in thrall to his domineering new squeeze, and Jonathan has lost all
passion for Bobbie, who wants marriage and family at any cost. The film jumps
forward once more: it’s about 1970 and the men are forty years old. Sandy, now
shacking up with a flower child, seems as fundamentally clueless as ever.
Jonathan has been reduced to cataloging all the “ball-busters” he’s dated over
the years, while forking over $100 bills in return for sexual pleasure at the
hands of a pro.
It’s not a pretty picture, in more ways than one. Nichols,
who brilliantly captured the look and feel of Southern California in The Graduate, goes a different route
here. The Graduate was all sunshine
and swimming pools: the visuals made a strong contribution to a story about
affluent suburbanites (like Ben’s parents) who give things instead of love. Carnal Knowledge is an east coast story,
without that same dramatic sense of place as a catalyst for the characters’
behavior. An Ivy League campus is merely some leafy woods and a dorm room; the
characters’ later lives in New York City boil down to some lighted skyscrapers,
a cushy office, and a nondescript apartment.
If visuals are not tremendously important, Nichols banks
here on sound, both the period pop tunes
on the soundtrack (like “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” at the first dorm
mixer) and the voices of the two men in earnest conversation. In fact, the
opening credits roll over a black screen, while we listen to them gab about the
sexcapades in their future. Later scenes are basically monologues, in which one
or the other takes the pulse of his current sex life.
One sad thing: the female characters, once wed or bedded,
completely disappear from the narrative. It’s a man’s world, and women like
Susan and Bobbie—apparently without jobs or purpose—have no long-lasting place
in it.