Bob, Carol, Ted y Alice

I rented this movie because I remembered one scene from 35 years ago. I was astounded to see that the whole movie holds up very well. The 4 leads are terrific (Natalie Wood and Dyan Canon are beautiful, by the way, and Robert Culp hits just the right note with his "sensitive-new- age-guy" hip/naive performance) and you can see director Paul Mazursky's touch with what seems to be stretches of impromptu dialog I found true.

The movie also does a great job of balancing drama with farce, superficiality with intimacy.

The scenes at the Esalen-type retreat start at as spoof but evolve into real empathy. Parenthetically, check out the fashions in this film. There is one scene in a discotheque that Mazursky must have known even then would be a source of laughter and certainly, today, it's a hoot.

This is a sex farce about the sexual revolution sweeping America during the late 1960s. The counter culture comes full circle in affluent Angelinos Bob (Robert Culp), Carol (Natalie Wood), Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon). Bob and Carol view themselves as in tune with the times, with occasional but not unlikeable smugness. The film begins with them visiting a retreat for spiritual and mental awakening. And they come away changed, especially Carol. So much so that Bob decides to have an affair and confess it to Carol. Carol thinks it's so wonderful she has one herself. I loved Natalie Wood's explaining to her angry husband, who walks in on her: "I wanted to do it. Because, I wanted to do it. I.... wanted to do it", while Bob's head is about to explode. He eventually calms down. Bob and Carol need to stay true to their ideals, and anger over an affair is an outdated 1950s response. Moreover, there's a difference between sex and love.

Their best friends, Ted and Alice, are solid philistines. But it's only a matter of time before Ted and Alice realize they're missing out. The performances are pitch perfect. Natalie Wood continues the hilarious neurosis of her Sex and the Single Girl (1964) character. Dyan Cannon's moral abhorrence becomes a comedy sketch when she's talking to her shrink, and in another sequence denying Ted sex as he begs like a teenager whose life depends on it. Inevitably, the couples swap partners, and it's filmed with remarkable poignancy.

The film remains fresh, and modern. Paul Mazursky directed and co-wrote it with Larry Tucker. They have affection for the characters, without mocking them, even the square Ted and Alice.

A big deal back in the day, when I saw this last on its theatrical release, this must look a little strange to a new generation. Even then it seemed a bit strange. We youngsters thought the sexual revolution was just for us, not our parents and this I think was where a lot of the humour came from back then. Many interesting questions raised about sex and marriage and love but essentially an amusing look at older people trying out our new found freedoms. Looked at know it remains interesting and somewhat amusing but mainly we notice how lovely the diminutive Natalie Wood was and wishing that Elliott Gould had had a larger part - in the film, that is, of course.

Drawing many rave reviews and even Academy Award nods, this remains one of my personal choices for a truly horrible film. I have tried over and over to watch this thing, telling myself to turn more positive and all that stuff. It doesn't work. Usually the sheer whiny and lifeless dialog alone makes me stop the video tape long before I have seen more than a third of the scenes. Seen by many as a great 60's portrayal, it lacks even the excitement of that era. The thought of having an affair, sexual or otherwise, with any of these morbid and depressing characters is totally out of the question for me.

Inveterate hippies who still smoke a joint a day will continue to find this movie a joy, even when their days of prostate problems and wrinkles have arrived. As Ancient Greece was important to the eventual development of drama, this movie is important to the eventual development of the X rated disasters currently in production.

I watched this film again having first seen it on late night TV in the mid 1980s when I was twenty. I thought it would be unintentionally funny, expecting it to have dated badly. How wrong I was! This film is an important timepiece, a fascinating insight in to hip west coast middle class life at a time when America was still on top of the world, yet to realize it would all be downhill from there. The film has stood up remarkably well, it's subject matter still poignant. The cultural and social concepts of fidelity are forever shifting, often turning full circle making films like B&C&T&A relevant and thought provoking some forty years after release. The film is beautifully directed by Mazursky, and is arguably the finest work ever done by all four leads in the film. I found it fascinating observing each performance closely – noting how the actors juggled their obvious affection for their character, while at the same time being true to Mazursky's raison d'être – a gentle dig at the new social mores of the wealthy west coast hip set. Delicately picking at the counter-culture as if choosing hors d'oeuvres from a waiter at a cocktail party, Bob and Carol experiment with dope, extra marital sex and new age group therapy. The dialogue sparkles, the actors so in tune with Mazursky's vision they breathe life in to what are essentially caricatures. At times the film is laugh out loud funny, though not unintentionally as I had expected. I was surprised to realize the film was released in 1969, thinking it was more an early 70s creation, so ahead of its' time does it seem even today. It was years before other artists dared tackle the difficult subject of middle class vacuity, and rarely with the eloquence and humour of this film. The film is also sumptuous to look at, Bob and Carol's elegant faux Spanish villa positively luxurious even by today's standards. The scene of the foursome cruising to Las Vegas in Ted's convertible Cadillac is an elegiac vision, a scene of America that no longer exists. A time when wealthy Americans still bought Cadillacs, when Las Vegas was seen as a place of glamor and fun and despite the social unrest and Vietnam, America was still big, brash and confident. The greatest civilization in the history of the world, all there to see as the white ragtop barrels down the highway, the foursome laughing and in high spirits – a scene that in some ways summed up the theme of the movie. With so much at their fingertips, the luckiest people to have ever lived, but they don't know what to do with the privilege. They are lost, their search for sexual and emotional fulfillment nothing more than a desperate search for meaning, a sad attempt to fill a nagging void. In the mid 1980s, former Eagle front man Don Henley had his last big hit with 'The Boys Of Summer', in which he sings of his dismay at seeing a new Cadillac pass him on the LA freeway, a Dead-head sticker on the bumper. The former hippies, the baby boomers, had sold out. Mazursky was telling us the same thing fifteen years earlier. Perhaps Pete Townsend of the Who summed it up best in his anthemic Won't Get Fooled Again – 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss' A highly thought-provoking experience seeing this film again, and for those interested in culture, counter or otherwise – this is a must.