"Maybe you're not supposed to like it with someone you love." With a
script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, Mike Nichols's Carnal
Knowledge (1971) ruthlessly exposed the damage wrought by pre-1960s
sexual mores. From their post-World War II college years at Amherst
through the Vietnam era, buddies Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy
(Art Garfunkel) are a catalogue of male sexual dysfunction. Sensitive
Sandy falls in love with and marries college sweetheart Susan (Candice
Bergen) only
to wonder years later if
he missed out on finding the perfect sex/love partner.
Jonathan lives
for aggressive sexual conquest (starting with Sandy's Susan in college),
even as he rails against female "ballbusters," finally guilt-marrying
his tiredly voluptuous mistress Bobbie (Ann-Margret, in an
Oscar-nominated performance) after she tries to kill herself. By the
late '60s, Sandy has moved on to a hippie chick girlfriend (Carol Kane)
who can raise his consciousness about the sexual revolution, and
Jonathan is single again, but Sandy is a little too old for the
peace-and-love generation, and Jonathan bitterly faces emasculating
impotence.
