Paul Mazursky, the Oscar-nominated writer-director who excelled at mining the urban middle class for laughs as well as tears in such movies as "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," "Blume in Love," "An Unmarried Woman" and "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," has died. He was 84.

Mazursky died of pulmonary cardiac arrest Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to family spokeswoman Nancy Willen.

A gentle satirist of contemporary society, Mazursky at his best chronicled the social trends of the late 1960s and the '70s, including its touchy-feely self-improvement fads, shifting rules for love and sex, drug experimentation and other excesses.

In the process, he created characters memorable for their struggles and vanities: the well-heeled couples in his 1969 directorial debut "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" who believe spouse-swapping is the cure for their hang-ups; the divorce lawyer in "Blume in Love" who thinks sexual freedom is great until his wife wants it; and the divorcee in "An Unmarried Woman" who steps gingerly into the singles scene after 15 years of what she thought had been a happy marriage.

Like Woody Allen, Mazursky wrote and directed most of his 17 films, which often were semi-autobiographical. He acted in nearly all of them. He was especially adept at creating strong female characters, as in Jill Clayburgh's standout portrayal of the jilted wife struggling toward independence in "An Unmarried Woman," which garnered three Oscar nominations: best actress for Clayburgh, best picture and best screenplay.