Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Plot synopsis:
After a weekend of emotional honesty at an Esalen-style retreat, Los Angeles sophisticates Bob and Carol Sanders (played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) return to their life determined to embrace complete openness. They share their enthusiasm and excitement over their new-found philosophy with their more conservative friends Ted and Alice Henderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon), though their friends remain doubtful. Soon after, Bob, a filmmaker, has an affair with a young, blonde production assistant on a film shoot in San Francisco. He admits this to Carol after arriving home, describing the event as a purely physical act, not an emotional one. To Bob's surprise, Carol is completely accepting of this. Later, Carol gleefully reveals the affair to Ted and Alice as they are leaving a dinner party. Alice is particularly disturbed both by Bob's infidelity, as well as Carol's candor, becoming physically ill on the drive home. She and Ted have a hard time coping with the news in bed later that evening. However, as time passes, they grow to accept that Bob and Carol really are fine with the affair. Later, Ted admits to Bob that he was tempted to have an affair once, but never went through with it; Bob tells Ted he should, rationalizing: "You've got the guilt anyway. Don't waste it."
During another visit to San Francisco, Bob decides to skip a second encounter with the blonde woman, and instead returns home a day earlier than expected. When he arrives, he finds that Carol is having an affair of her own, with her tennis instructor. Although initially outraged, Bob quickly realizes that, like his own affair, the encounter was purely physical. Bob settles down, and even shares a drink and conversation with the tennis instructor.
When the two couples travel together to Las Vegas, Bob and Carol reveal Carol's affair to Ted and Alice. Ted then admits to an affair on a recent business trip to Miami. An outraged Alice demands that this new ethos be taken to its obvious conclusion: a mate-sharing foursome. Ted is reluctant, explaining that he loves Carol "like a sister," but eventually acknowledges that he finds her attractive. After discussing it, all four remove their clothes and climb into bed together. Swapping partners, Bob and Alice kiss fervently, as do Ted and Carol; however, after a few moments, all four simply stop.
The scene cuts to the couples walking to the elevator, riding it down, and walking out of the casino hand-in-hand with their original partners. A crowd of men and women of various cultures and races congregate in the casino parking lot, wherein the four main characters exchange long stares with each other and with strangers, reminiscent of the non-verbal communication shown in the early scene at the retreat. Over this final scene, the film's theme song reminds the viewer that "what the world needs now is love." As Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice look into each partner's eyes, the film fades to black.

Tags: pornographic, satire, home movie

Review:
Robert Culp is a strong counterpart to her as Bob. The more repressed couple, Eliott Gould and Dyan Cannon, are perfect.Along the way, they explore the boundaries of sexuality, monogamy and friendship, and realize that some lines are better left uncrossed.
The funny moments are priceless:  the tennis instructor asking for a glass of Pernod, Dyan Cannon in the therepist's office--probably the funniest and most perceptive take on the "therepy experience" ever shown on film-- (along with Kirstie Alley's therapist melt-down scene in Woody Allen's"Deconstructing Harry"),  the opening group therapy session in the beautifulCalifornia countryside, that first dinner in the restaurant with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all declaring their love for each other in front of the table of bemused gay diners--it is a film filled with endless, perceptive and highlyamusing details.
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.
Elliott Gould was never more befuddled, Dyan Cannon's best acting when she was gorgeous, Robert Culp's only decent movie, and Natalie Wood was born to play Carol.Certainly a 9 out 10!
Having visited a therapy group, Bob and Carol Sanders (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) have become more open about their sexuality, and are identifying more with the counterculture in general.
As for the characters, Bob seems sort of wooden, Carol is hot (as Natalie Wood always was), Ted is a dork, and Alice is a little eccentric.
The pay-off,  it seems to me, is in the fact that at the moment when the enthusiastic couple and the reluctant couple submit to the full and unfettered concept of free love,  they finally realize the truth that no matter how much love and social freedom they feel towards their dearest friends,  there are still some areas of human experience that are best kept private and intimate.So,  rather charmingly,  they decide that however hip they seem and wish to appear,  deep down they are as old fashioned as you and me !Malcolm McDougall  -  ( child of the sixties ).
However, I was compelled to keep watching the film to see what would be the result of their "experiment"  The film did have some funny moments such as Elliot Gould fantasizing about a marital affair and Dyan Cannon at the shrink.I give the film credit since I could not figure out what the ending would be like and was somewhat surprised by it when it happened.
Overall, an OK film in my opinion.Side Note:  Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon look pretty hot in this movie so if your a male like myself and always found these woman attractive, its a must rental !.
Two married couples (Bob: Robert Culp, Carol: Natalie Wood, Ted: Elliott Gould, Alice: Dyan Cannon) feel as though true excitement is missing from their marriages and so they decide to pick things up by wife swapping and having drug parties.
So I got through those two major scenes, sans sound this time, and once it picked up from the restaurant and I turned the sound up, I have to admit...I began getting caught up in it.The going back and forth between the four was entertaining and as someone said in another comment, a good portion of this is simply the great acting and the dialogue, the verbal exchanges and parrying back and forth as Bob and Carol discover things about one another, and work to whittle away at Ted and Alice about the possibilities inherent in emotion-free sexual dalliances.Cannon's character is pivotal in a lot of this, as the outraged friend of Carol.
As everyone rejuvenates their sexual thinking and behavior, other problems rear their ugly heads, and the four realize only love is needed to revitalize a marriage.It's pretty gutsy material for the time, and I'm fairly sure you wouldn't see a film this brave come from a major studio with big-name stars today.
When Bob (Robert Culp) returns home to find wife Carol (Natalie Wood) entertaining a gentleman in their bedroom, he's outraged--forgetting that he himself just disclosed having an affair not too long back.
I was surprised to see this movie on DVD when I was in the store a few days ago, but I didn't see anything else that I really wanted to watch, and was naturally curious about it, so I rented it.While far from being a bad movie, "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" is certainly not what I would consider a good movie.
"Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" tells the story of a middle-aged couple who were caught up in the liberated attitudes of the time, for a brief period at least.
Anyone who looks at these two movies side-by-side will surely agree that "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice", while moderately amusing when it was current, has no lasting value..
The comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" is the type of movie that aged badly.
Bob & Carol Get in Bed with Alice & Ted. In Southern California, documentary filmmaker Robert Culp (as Bob Sanders) and his beautiful wife Natalie Wood (as Carol) participate in group sensitivity for research.
Wood and Culp share sexual feelings with each other and best friends Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon (as Ted and Alice Henderson) come into the bed...Though considered by many to be very 1960s, sessions like the one in the opening are used today to "bond" workers in new employment situations; however, the cigarette smokers and topless women are not in evidence.
Most obviously, Natalie Wood is sexy and stupendous.******* Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (9/17/69) Paul Mazursky ~ Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon.
He cleverly uses the "Hallelujah" chorus of Handel's "Messiah" to open the film as documentary filmmaker Bob Sanders and his wife Carol drive through the canyons outside LA to an Esalen-like couples' retreat where narcissism runs rampant with participants encouraged to express how they "feel" through group hugs, crying, mutual staring, even pillow punching.The experience transforms Bob and Carol into a touchy-feely couple so intent on being completely honest with each other that they accept each other's acts of adultery.
Through it all, the four principal actors give sharp performances that wisely leave the motivations for their characters ambiguous enough for the audience to draw their own conclusions.Coming off his hit TV series "I Spy", Robert Culp effectively plays Bob as a hippie-wannabe closing in on middle age and recognizing an innate need to give in to the new moral order to belong.
". Capturing the sexual revolution of the late sixties, this comedy presents two married couples, free-thinking and ready (or so they think) for an open marriage Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood) and their best friends, a more traditional couple, Ted (Elliot Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon).
Debut splashes, Paul Mazursky's BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE is a biting satire channels the experiment of "openness" in human correlations through its epoch's sex liberation ethos.
The four protagonists are two married couples who are each other's closest friends, Bob (Culp) and Carol (Wood) Sanders, Ted (Gould) and Alice (Cannon) Henderson.In its opening aerial shots, a preamble shows Bob and Carol attending a group therapy (denoted by nudism and t'aichi) during a weekend getaway and culminating in the mutual opening of their true feelings towards each other.
Appended their experiment with a sober coda in concert with the rousing anthem WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE, penned by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, sung by Jackie DeShannon, Mazursky's relationship, friendship dissecting film ultimately extracts a prudent message, whereas libido often culminates in an ephemeral thrill, there are many things in our live are (way) more important than sex, keeping a sane mind when you are pursuing your carnal desire.
But seeing it today in the 21st century and knowing that there is as far as I know NO Movies today that even come close to approaching the examination of marriage/love/friendship that Bob Carol Ted and Alice does I feel like I've accidentally stumbled on a forgotten gem.
Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a devilishly funny but wickedly thoughtful and contemplative film that shows a time period in America when what happened in the bedroom between a man and a woman didn't stay in the bedroom between a man and a woman.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was made in 1969, right on the teetering edge of the hippie movement and during the "free love" movement, where marriage was seen as a restraint on ones well-being and pocketbook and the state had no business in dealing with it.
The couples are Bob and Carol Sanders (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood), a trendier, more liberal couple, while Ted and Alice Henderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) are your more straight-shooting, square couple, highly indicative of the parents of sexually promiscuous teens in the 1960's and 1970's trying to understand their teenage sons and daughters.Bob and Carol spend a weekend at a couples retreat, one of those camps that allows for emotional honesty between married people to flow and allow for deeper feelings and emotions to penetrate one another.
Carol accepts this about as well as a wife could, believing Bob, admiring his honesty, and carrying on her own way, even casually revealing it to their best friends Ted and Alice, who are appalled at the thought.
In this conversation, Mazursky leaves the camera turned on the couple for a long period of time, listening to the conversation, hearing what both has to say, and leaving us with a lot to contemplate by the end of talk, whether we're single or married.These kinds of dialogs that go on for a while and leave the view in a self-contemplative state are fiercely common in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, including the nudging idea of "is it possible for a couple to be married for a lifetime and not have sexual feelings for another women, be them expressed or regressed?" Throughout his career, Mazursky has been interested in character, marriages, the arguments and debates that a husband and wife have, but most importantly, relationships.
We have the unbelievably gorgeous and beautifully mannered Natalie Wood in a role that requires impeccable conviction and plausibility, given the tender nature, Robert Culp in an equally uncomfortable but rewarding role, with Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon assuming the role of the uppity parents trying to comprehend this "sexual openness" these couples speak of.
To show that these questions are still very much alive and the idea of sexual openness is still one discussed today, the modern-day film equivalent to Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies, a film that clearly is influenced by Mazursky's film right down to its poster.
The 'enlightment' meeting that Bob and Carol (played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) attended with many other couples about tell what they really feel about each other was something that every writer wanted to write: those dialogs, those almost dreamy situations, and how this one particular scene moved the whole film into the concept of this two couples who are willing to tell how they feel about themselves, sex, drugs, cheating, new partners and all the things around them.
"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" was groundbreaking in the 1960's because took films and society into another level by showing that societies shouldn't be so sexually repressed, so puritan and so critical of what happens behind four walls.
"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" really makes you think and feel something unique.
Robert Culp and a stunning Natalie Wood play a vapid couple who stay at a free love retreat and then implement what they learned in their own marriage, both having affairs and coming out stronger on the other side of them.
Their friends Ted and Alice Anderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) are the exact opposites of Bob and Carol.
In my consumer guide mode, I should first mention one very simple way to tell whether you might like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice--do you like films that are almost all dialogue?
I was especially impressed with Elliott Gould, partially because I haven't always liked him in other films.Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice deals with normal, middle class couples in the late 1960s who are trying to deal with and adapt to cultural spillover from the then-popular hippie movement.
When they get back home, they introduce their new approach to life and interpersonal communications to best friends Ted (Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon), who think that Bob and Carol have gone a bit looney.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice then becomes primarily an exploration of how average middle class folks deal with attempts to incorporate hippie sexual liberation beliefs into their lives.It's a great idea, handled with aplomb by writer-director Paul Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker.
All the way through it seemed to be a celebration of the sexually free-wheeling 60's, with Bob and Carol essentially enjoying an open marriage - not only having affairs but telling each other about them and sometimes even meeting each other's lovers - and basically trying to convince Ted and Alice to join them in this lifestyle of freedom.
I also loved the beginning of the movie with the encounter session which was absolutely hilarious.Robert Culp & Natalie Wood & Elliott Gould & Diane Cannon as the respective title characters were fantastic all the way through, and their performances made an interesting story even better.
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are not emotionally capable of an orgy, and they end up giving in and accepting the fact that there is such a thing as a monogamous relationship.
The tides turn as the honesty leads them to decide to switch partners, Wood ending up with Cannon's husband (a very droll Elliot Gould) and Culp preparing to make love with his best friend's wife, all in a rather tiny bed.So you can say that this is not as wild as it looks, supposedly happily married couples getting together and seeing if they can be as swinging as the world has been trying to tell them that it's OK to be.
Group or open sexuality, for the uninitiated straight first-time "vanilla" male, particularly in the same room/bed with another male, can be a very stressful situation.Simply put: Despite the appeal and willingness of Carol & Alice, neither Bob or Ted, in their situational anxiety, were able to "get it up".
After a weekend of emotionally charged encounter sessions at an Esalen- like retreat known as "The Institute," L.A.-based documentary filmmaker Bob Sanders (Robert Culp) and his wife Carol (Natalie Wood) become zealous acolytes of the late-Sixties, hippie-inspired cult of expressive individualism: an apolitical ideology of bourgeois hedonism that sanctifies joyful spontaneity, uninhibited candor, and guilt-free (extramarital) sex as the sine qua non of a fulfilling life.
As for Bob and Carol's best friends—Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon)—this New Age ethos strikes them as suspiciously naive and self-indulgent until Ted succumbs to his own opportunity to cheat while on a trip to Miami.
The other interesting moment was when Alice and Ted are going to bed and just found out about Bob's infidelity and how disgusted they are that Carol has accepted it.
The end result was that I did see it through different eyes but it didn't make the film that much better.Ted Sanders (Robert Culp) is a documentary film makers who goes to an Esalen-type retreat with his wife Carol (Natalie Wood) thinking that perhaps there is a film to be made about the place.
At a 24 hour session Bob and Carol open up to the group and to one another and find a peace in their ability to be completely honest with everyone.They return home and later go to dinner with their friends Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon), a conservative couple they're best friends with.
Two Los Angeles professional couples are Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood in a surprising role) and Ted (Elliott Gould) and Dyan Cannon (Alice) who spend the entire movie discussing sexuality and monogamy.
The film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice describes two married couples, who experiment with sexual attitudes, and finally end up together in bed for an orgy.
Watching today, almost a half century after it was made, the movie comes across like a parody of the Sixties with it's free love and preoccupation with the sexual revolution.
It also features Robert Culp wearing all of the most pretentious looking clothes one might have appropriated to impress like minded hedonists - Nehru jacket, frilly shirt, love beads and whistle - the kind of outerwear that I, even as a teenager at the time, fully regarded as a complete turn off.The best scene for me had Ted (Elliott Gould) trying to make love to his wife Alice (Dyan Cannon) right after learning their friend Bob (Culp) had a fling in San Francisco, with wife Carol (Natalie Wood) being so understanding about it.
Release a film like "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" today and it would feel tawdry and tasteless.
Release it in the 1960s, though, and it'll fizzle with a certain authenticity.Directed by Paul Mazursky, who famously starred in Stanley Kubrick's "Fear and Desire", "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" stars Robert Culp and the always beautiful Natalie Wood as Bob and Carol, a married couple who find themselves at a New Age retreat.