Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Director: Paul Mazursky

1969 / 105min / DCP

Mazursky’s wry, fingers-on-the-zeitgeist comedy-drama observes the fallout of the sexual revolution’s belated arrival in the tony Los Angeles suburbs, which comes courtesy of married couple Bob and Carol (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood), who return from an Esalen-esque retreat preaching the virtues of free love hedonism. This occurs much to the disbelief of their friends Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon), who find themselves re-evaluating their own staid domestic arrangement in light of Bob and Carol’s example. “A slick, whorey movie, and the liveliest American comedy so far this year.”—Pauline Kael, The New Yorker