Reaction
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice became the signature film for Paul Mazursky and was a critical and commercial success. It was the fifth highest grossing film of 1969. After this film's release, it led to other movies dealing with wife swapping, infidelity, and other types of experimentation with interpersonal relationships inside American society. Mazursky himself would do a few more stories set in California, including Alex in Wonderland and Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
Writing in The New Yorker the film critic Pauline Kael praised both the film and director Mazursky, calling it " a slick, whorey movie, and the liveliest American comedy so far this year. Mazursky, directing his first picture, has developed a style from satiric improvisational revue theatre - he and Tucker were part of the Second City troupe - and from TV situation comedy, and, with skill and wit, has made this mixture work - though it looks conventional, it isn't ".
Natalie Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 salary on a percentage of the gross, earning $5 million over the course of three years. She had deeply regretted declining a similar offer with the box office smash West Side Story.
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Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)
“Christianity was only a very strong and singularly well-timed Salvation Army movement that happened to receive help from an unusual and highly dramatic incident. It was a Puritan reaction in an age when, no doubt, a Puritan reaction was much wanted; but like all sudden violent reactions, it soon wanted reacting against.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)