I gave Paul Mazursky‘s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) a second chance and liked it a little better this time. It’s the one about confusion over sexual values (in the late Sixties) and emerging freedom itself, if that’s what it is. The initial sequence is smart in how it suggests that traditional religious beliefs have been supplanted by touchy-feely, therapeutic balderdash. This and the rest of the film, moreover, is well—and artistically—directed by Mazursky.
I still find the writing by Mazursky and Larry Tucker dissatisfying, however. Too often the talk gets boring. The resolution at the end doesn’t work because Dyan Cannon‘s Alice is the only one in the quartet who hasn’t injured someone by having an affair. She and her husband Ted (Elliot Gould) are not in the same moral position. I believe the picture should be seen, though, especially since it stars a breathtakingly beautiful Natalie Wood, a true star. Why wasn’t she seen on movie screens more often after this film?
Leave a Reply