my favorite movies of 1969:

(1) Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

(2) Law and Order

favorite of 1969:

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

(Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon. Directed by Paul Mazursky.)

I think your hair is ridiculous. It’s silly.

That’s gorgeous, man. The truth is always beautiful.

Going into this movie for the first time, I was expecting it to be a frivolous and dated ’60s “sex comedy” about “wife swapping” (that sexist phrase). Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice turned out to be more interesting and moving than I could’ve imagined. It is very much “of its time”; as Quentin Tarantino says in the video below, this movie would’ve been unthinkable just a few years earlier, and if it had come out a few years later “it would look completely different.” But is it “dated”? No, the movie has held up well because of the quality of the writing, acting, and directing, and because it deals with issues that still matter to us, like: Are traditional norms about marriage worth preserving, or do they needlessly hold us back from getting in touch with our true feelings?

Natalie Wood plays Carol. The actors who play Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon) were nominated for Oscars for Best Supporting Actor and Actress.

A question to consider while watching: Who’s the most important character, Bob or Carol or Ted or Alice?

This is the Tarantino video I mentioned. First he gives his general thoughts on Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which he calls “one of my favorite movies”; after 5:30, he reacts during a break in the middle of the movie; and at 11:45 he starts talking about the ending.

(How to stream Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.)

2nd favorite of 1969:

Law and Order

(Documentary. Directed by Frederick Wiseman.)

This is another Wiseman documentary; I described his general approach in my post on High School (1968) (scroll down in that post).

Law and Order focuses on the Kansas City Police Department in Missouri in 1968. Many who interact with the police are black, while the police force seems to be almost all white.

That video is the most striking scene of the movie. Police officers enter a building where they find a young black woman, who seems to be alone and not bothering anyone. One officer immediately starts choking her, and she makes clear she can’t speak while the police ask her a barrage of questions. After the police finally stop choking her, she politely answers their questions, calling the officers “Sir” and admitting that she was using a room in the building for prostitution. When she complains about the choking, an officer cheerfully responds: “He wasn’t choking! You’re imagining!”

The police did all that, even knowing they were being filmed for a documentary.

Stream Law and Order on Kanopy.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.