Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice: A Stylized Stumble To Self-Awareness

The year was 1969. The sexual revolution was sweeping society. But so was something else—a moral epidemic of confusion.

Meet Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice. Four individuals trying to identify with a new sexual shift they are emotionally removed from.

Despite what you may think, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (BCTA) is not a film about sex at all. It’s a sharp satire of the sociological effects of liberal thinking affecting thirty-somethings in the late 1960s. Young enough to embrace the hip happenings, but old enough to have an ingrained set of values, this demographic struggled to fully assimilate the free sex ethos into their lives—whether they realized it or not.

In his directorial debut, Paul Mazursky undresses this social struggle with an acute use of comedy that is thought-provokingly honest. The story begins at a California institute, which is actually more akin to a highly emotional cult. Filmmaker Bob and his wife Carol (Robert Culp & Natalie Wood) attend a weekend retreat there to research Bob’s new film.

After the retreat, the sophisticated couple returns to their swanky lifestyle with a modernized outlook on sex. Compelled to constantly share the truth, they congratulate each other on every emotion they share, good and bad. As they push this new lifestyle on their straight-laced best friends Ted and Alice (Elliot Gould & Dyan Cannon), sexual tensions between the foursome begin to bubble.

Shot in a documentary style, Mazursky gets up close and personal with these characters, exposing the insecurities behind their exteriors. As they strive to discover their inner selves, they’re actually losing sight of who they really are. This is most visible in Ted and Alice, who fight to be more open with hilarious discomfort that steals the picture.

When Bob tells Carol he had an affair, she reacts in a calm, cool, collected manner, commending him for being honest and open. It’s unnerving, odd and mostly comical. Her subtly unaffected reaction leaves an over-the-top impact revealing what this film is truly about—self-awareness.

“How do I react?” “What do I say?” Instead of intuitively responding to their feelings, this foursome begins to examine how their actions fit into the new social ethos.

Mazursky brings the film full circle when the couples attempt to swap wives in a Las Vegas hotel room. Stripped of their clothes, the foursome is enlightened to realize they’re also stripped of their new attitude towards sex. As their morals prevail, this almost grope group ironically discovers they are the same four individuals they always were. Self-awareness starts with loving yourself—all of yourself. If you know who you are and accept it, you’ll never try to be something you’re not.

A comedy of manners, BCTA was a film unlike any other at the time of its release. Its improv style and fresh view on marital woes shines with humanity—lifeblood that makes the film as intriguing and relevant now as it was almost 50 years ago.

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