Review of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

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. The present-day morals see this narrative as offensive and shocking. Think about all those stains! However, it gets digestible, when the counter culture movement of the late sixties is taken into account. Hippies, the new left, and the humanistic psychology wanted to abolish all those morals, which seemed so oppressive and out of date. Everything is fantastic with a few more people. Collective action (communes!) was preferred over competition. Relations should be based on the free expression of emotions. Thus even parts of the middle class developed a liking for social experiments. Few, if any, conducts were deemed inappropriate. On the contrary, there seemed to be merit in them. And anyway, everybody looks funny naked. Against this background the film story is merely a voyage of discovery. It is even possible to chuckle about funny (or bizarre) scenes. Here are some: Carol pursues the waiter in a restaurant in order to express her gratitude. She praises the meatloaf. It was apple pie (joking). When Bob catches Carol for adultery in their own house, he presents a glass to his rival (Horst, the tennis Lehrer), and offers his extensive collection of whiskey marks. Drinking makes other people more interesting. Of course they smoke hashish. In bed Ted is frustrated when Alice rejects him. His efforts to engage in intercourse, even though she is not "in the mood", are hilarious. He fails, because the preservatives are all gone! She is evidently disturbed by the decay of morals, and visits a therapist. At the time even dogs had their own therapist. She tells that sometimes at home she walks about naked, and her son asked about her "titi" ("He is so sweet"). When in the end the two couples land in the same bed, they have clearly lost control. Here the film makers finally show their disapproval, and the orgy fails. It is simply a violation of human nature. Being a contemporary, I am still somehow mollified by this crazy abolishment of any taboo, but I can not remember why. I also acknowledge the slippery slope towards perversity and morbidity. Will the present youth loathe Bob and company?