Review of Carnal Knowledge (1971) by Dianna D — 15 Jan 2013

The sixties were a time when nearly every boundary was tested. In the seventies we began to learn that boundaries don't necessarily restrict freedom but exist to provide elasticity which stretched too thin too fast can break.

Carnal Knowledge follows two buddies through their college years and into middle age a period during which the sexual revolution swept many not into a new land of liberation but to a world of sexual dysfunction, misogyny, and oppression.

Jack Nicholson is terrific as man who became a callous, self-centered product of the revolution. Art Garfunkel, in a stiff and uninteresting performance, is Nicholson's erudite buddy. Directed by Mike Nichols, the movie lacks the wit of "The Graduate" and Jules Feiffer's script is leaden without a hint of irony that could elevate the film from tolerable to entertaining.

Carnal Knowledge is a curio of late sixties/early seventies film-making that captures, depressingly, the underside of the '60s sexual revolution. Perhaps a wittier, lighter touch would have made this a classic.