Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Spoilers

What struck me most about 1969's BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE was director Paul Mazursky's penchant for lengthy scenes.  They're so rare anymore.  Maybe contemporary audiences can't tolerate something with an ASL of more than four seconds.   I was reminded of Paul Thomas Anderson's INHERENT VICE, which was set in 1970 and sought to emulate the filmic style of that time period.  Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood) end up on a bathroom floor in each other's arms.  He's just confessed to an affair while at a convention.  She's initially caught off guard, but then explains how beautiful it is to be so honest, and to have such freedom.  The camera observes from above, from the side, and continues for several minutes.  No attempts to be New Wave or anything.  Just a good hard look.

And that would describe this iconic film, with its famous image of the four leads in bed together.  That's at the film's er, climax, but on the way there is a lot of examination of new attitudes about marital fidelity.  It was in the zeitgeist, especially in late '60s California, where encounter groups and their espousal of the connection between mind and body was so commonplace.  Bob and Carol attend such a conference, and both adopt a new mantra of openness, one that appears foolish to their straight laced friends Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon).  When Carol excitedly tells them of Bob's admission of infidelity, it sends them into a long night of self awareness, disgust, and guilt.  Their lengthy scene is a little masterpiece, one that is cringe worthy and hilarious. 

BOB & CAROL....forever straddles the very thin line between comedy and pathos.  Mazursky, in his debut, satirizes '60s L.A. fads and mores as well as anything I've seen.  He would continue such observations in films like DOWN & OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS and others.   It really is lightning in a bottle for this time period and its culture.  The film spends plenty of time in each scene for us to really see the dynamics of these characters.  To give us as vivid a portrait of them as is possible.  Witness Alice's very funny session with her shrink.  Or when Bob comes home to find Carol with her tennis instructor - the scene develops into something unexpected and even humanistic. It prefaces some of the plotting of Mazursky's BLUME IN LOVE.  The actors here are just right, and maybe even fearless to a degree.

The movie is not perfect.  Sometimes Mazursky gets carried away, as with the use of "Hallelujah" during the opening credits.  Or the very last scene, which was a little too cute and contrived for my taste.  But that denouement, when the four principals find themselves in Las Vegas and attempting to practice what they preach, at first promises to be smutty and ridiculous but instead turns into something brutally honest and uncomfortable, and ultimately beautiful.