Carnal Knowledge (1971) on Netflix
In the late 1940s, Amherst roommates Jonathan and Sandy are both virgins, comparing notes on the women they want. Sandy courts Susan; Jonathan, competitive, asks her out behind his back.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.9/1017,279 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sandy and Jonathan share a room at Amherst College in the late 1940s, both inexperienced and both full of opinions about the kind of woman each hopes to find. Sandy, the gentler of the two, meets Susan, a Smith College student, at a campus event and begins dating her, moving carefully and weighing what she seems to want. Jonathan is the bolder one, and he loses his virginity first, with Myrtle, a girlfriend he keeps out of sight. Susan hesitates to take her relationship with Sandy further, and Sandy tells his roommate the details. Each man measures his own arrangement against what he knows of the other's, wanting a little of what the other has.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Carnal Knowledge (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The script of Carnal Knowledge was originally written as a play; Jules Feiffer sent it to Mike Nichols, who thought it would work better as a film, and it was made that way instead.
- A theater in Albany, Georgia showed the film, and on January 13, 1972 local police served a search warrant and seized it under local obscenity laws; that March the theater's manager was convicted of distributing obscene material.
- After the film's release in Rome, Carnal Knowledge was briefly banned in Italy in February 1972 on the grounds that it was obscene.
