Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (15)

D: Paul Mazursky

Columbia (Larry Tucker)

USA 🇺🇸 1969

101 mins

Comedy/Drama

W: Paul Mazursky & Larry Tucker

DP: Charles B. Lang

Ed: Stuart H. Pappe

Mus: Quincy Jones

Robert Culp (Bob Sanders), Natalie Wood (Carol Sanders), Elliott Gould (Ted Henderson), Dyan Cannon (Alice Henderson), Horst Ebersberg (Horst)

Seminal sex comedy of the 1960's which caused quite a stir at the time (released with an X-rated certificate) but looks incredibly tame when looked back on retrospectively.

The plot follows a pair of married friends, the liberally bohemian Bob & Carol, who openly share admissions of each other's infidelity, and the more conservative pair of Ted & Alice, who are the polar opposite.

Over the course of the movie, various conversations and scenarios happen, leading the four to share a bed together under the pretence of "free love" that was a new dawn at the tail end of the 1960's.

The film is quite tastefully done, without resorting to smut or gratuitous nudity and the performances of the four principal characters are excellent, especially Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon, whose Ted & Alice are more grounded in reality than Robert Culp and Natalie Wood's more promiscuous Bob & Carol.

A time portal movie of sexual manners of the time. Dated now, but still worth a watch for those who can swallow the pretensions of the plot.

A short-lived television series followed in the early 1970's.

7/10