Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
by Paul Mazursky
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DVD details
Actor: Dyan Cannon, Elliott Gould, Horst Ebersberg, Natalie Wood, Robert CulpDirector: Paul Mazursky
Brand: WOOD,NATALIE
Cinematographer: Charles Lang
Writer: Paul Mazursky
Editor: Stuart H. Pappé
Producer: M.J. Frankovich
Writer: Larry Tucker
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
Published: 2004-11-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-11-16
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
DVD Review: Dated? The clothes and dialogue maybe - but the feelings will always be real
Summary: 4 Stars
Handel's Messiah swells and rises as a green Jaguar drives up a winding road into the mountains. It's headed for a retreat, a getaway for Bob & Carol (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood), a 30ish, well-to-do couple for L.A.; as they approach their destination, the traditional score acquires a rocking background beat, symbolizes the changes in store for the couple, their friends Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon), American film, and I suppose America itself as the sexual revolution combined with a spiritual awakening - or perhaps unrest/disquiet might be a better phrase. Bob is a documentary filmmaker as it turns out, and he just wants to observe and film the goings-on - encounter sessions and group therapy, mostly - but quickly he and Carol get intimately involved, and back in L.A., they feel the need to share their new insights with their more conservative friends.
Ted and Alice mostly humor their slightly hipper friends, until Bob confesses to having an affair on a recent business trip - and Carol accepts it, soon wondering herself if she might like to play around. Alice simply can't deal with what she sees as Bob's betrayal, and perhaps more importantly Carol's betrayal of the quartet's shared moral outlook, and this precipitates a period of unease between the four. Alice eventually seems to become more accepting of this newfound openness and freedom from the traditional structures - for others - but her attitudes will be put on trial when the two couples decide to spend a weekend in Las Vegas.
This is one of those films that you are inevitably going to find attached to the dreaded "d" word - dated. Well, how could it not be in a sense? It's very deliberately about a time (1969) and place (southern California) , and about how the sexual revolution and the search for meaning and a new spirituality in a troubled time affects a group of four young, wealthy, attractive (well, at least the women) friends who consider themselves "hip" and "with it", but show, in varying degrees, the old conservative 50s morals of a previous generation, however much they try to fight it. Peer beneath the surface a little bit, though, and I think you'll find that there's a lot more than the now old-fashioned dialogue, clothing, and moral questions going on here. It's interesting that Mazursky and cowriter Larry Tucker chose to center the story around a quartet in their 30s, for example - it's quite explicit in the film that these are people who still "feel" very young, but have started to act like their parents, have started to become more conservative and less adventurous. And though there's plenty of sex talk, there's no nudity and the ending "orgy" sequence is very oddly and subtly put together - I got the feeling throughout that it is the fantasy element, the what-might-be, that is really what's important in the dynamics here, rather than any real "cheating" or getting away with anything. The film is, I think, more about the possibilities, and about communication, than it is about any actual changing of sexual morality. It doesn't come down for change as such, but for talk, and for thought.
It's a fairly witty and sophisticated comedy, certainly by the standards of American "sex comedies" (in some ways this is more like a French comedy of the time, from Rohmer or Truffaut) and though the dialogue and some of the situations do scream out 1960s, the overall themes of love and neediness and trust are certainly universal. Remarkably enough, the film was a huge box-office success, earning the equivalent of over $80 million in 2010 dollars, enough to place it in the top 10 for the year. It's hard to imagine a talky comedy on adult themes doing anywhere near so well these days, particularly one without huge stars (though Wood in particular was certainly well known). Solid performances all around, especially I think from Natalie Wood, who gets inside the idea of a woman who is really grappling with a changing vision of herself and her world, and who I have to say is about gorgeous here as any woman in any movie ever.
The DVD looks great; I think that Mazursky's talk in front of college students is more valuable and instructive than the joky and self-conscious commentary track provided by him and the surviving actors.
Description of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
A California couple in the late sixties decide to test the strength of their marital trust and honesty by experimenting with mutually tolerated affairs, much to the amusement of their friends.Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-APR-2006
Media Type: DVD
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