Carnal Knowledge 4K 1971 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

An accurate and frank, almost cynical account of the sexual adventures and experiences of two American men over two decades of life. It begins with two college students in their late 40s sharing a dorm room and sharing a blonde roommate. Their subsequent lives are then traced.

Review 4K Movie

The 1940s. Two American college students, Jonathan and Sandy, share a dorm room, and despite being considered friends, their views on women and sex are very different. Cynical and cocky Jonathan prefers to judge women solely on their looks, treating dating and intimate relationships as a game. The rules of the game dictate that you must conquer and break as many women's hearts as possible, but at the same time avoid falling into the trap of those who only dream of tying you down. The shy idealist Sandy falls for sensual and intelligent women, but only in his fantasies.

Then one day at a student party, the friends spot a pretty blonde named Susan, sitting alone and bored in a corner. When they meet her, it turns out that she is also willing to “play the game.” Now Jonathan and Sandy have to share one girl between them, although the former sleeps with her semi-legally, keeping it a secret from his friend. But after being asked to choose one of them, the shared lover gives preference to Sandy, calculating that it is better to have a bird in the hand.

Hurt by this choice, Jonathan throws himself even more actively into debauchery, and, after sleeping with his two thousandth mistress, meets a model named Bobbi. What's more, he even marries her, but after a while they divorce, as does Sandy. By the time the plot reaches its climax, one of the friends

becomes impotent, while the other solves all his problems with the help of psychoanalysis. At the same time, both, as before, prefer exclusively casual relationships - ranging from very young nymphets to experienced prostitutes.

The film by 40-year-old Mike Nichols is a fragmented and rational film about a consumerist and therefore emotionless attitude towards sex. It is a candid story about the sexual adventures of the director's peers, who wanted to find the perfect woman and competed with each other to change their life partners. Using one generation as an example, Nichols attempts to trace how attitudes toward free love have changed. The film suggests that nothing much has changed: the cynical Jonathan ends up becoming even more heartless in matters of love, while his boring friend becomes a completely unmotivated slacker.

At first glance, it seems strange that the era of sexual emancipation did not rid those who were “lucky” enough to tie their lives to it of their immaturity: a quarter of a century later, Jonathan and Sandy have not become any wiser. The answer to the question of what women exist for remains unambiguous for both of them. Limiting themselves to animal instincts, the friends never came close to unraveling the most important aspect of human relationships. That is why the unresolved youthful preoccupation with sex, which clings tightly to forty-year-old men, seems like a ridiculous atavism — a “childish disease of coolness” — and therefore is not so much amusing as it is “sad.”

This film had a difficult distribution history. It was released on 5,000 screens across the country, but in some particularly moralistic states, distributors were embarrassed by the presence of three erotic scenes, including one “indecent sexual act.” Under the guise of fighting immorality—a shameful interest in the naked body—censors began removing copies directly from projection booths, arresting theater managers, and issuing hefty fines to those who still risked showing the film.

But this film, like many other disgraced films, was saved by an appeal to the Supreme Court and the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. In the end, the series of scandals only provoked additional interest in the film, which was seen by a total of almost 20 million Americans, who left $28.6 million at the box office (it is not difficult to calculate that a movie ticket in the United States at that time cost only a dollar and a half, that is, five times less than now). And although Nichols's biggest hit, The Graduate, grossed four times more than Carnal Knowledge in 1967, it was still an excellent result for a film that was very “economical” in terms of action and based mainly on dialogue.

Summary: This now half-forgotten film conveys the essence of the attitude toward free love of the generation of Americans who were the first to experience the sexual revolution. Today, such eroticism is unlikely to “get under anyone's skin,” as it now requires a much stronger “stimulus” to do so.