1967 was the beginning of a new era in Hollywood filmmaking. The old studio system was slowly dying and a new wave of American filmmakers began to emerge. These filmmakers would usher in the greatest era of American film lasting from 1967 through 1981. Two films from 1967 in particular, helped to kick start this era. One was Bonnie and Clyde; the other was The Graduate.
Directed by Mike Nichols, who after a successful theater career made the leap to film in 1966 with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate still holds an emotional resonance today and remains one of the great American films of all time. After two less than stellar DVD incarnations, The Graduate has finally been given the proper treatment here with a newly remastered picture and a host of extras.
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has just returned home to his wealthy upper class home in Los Angeles after graduating from an eastern university. Immediately his oblivious parents throw a party for him that he clearly wants no part of. He tries to express his anxiety and fear regarding his future and life to his father but it goes right over his head.
The party guests include family friends that bombard him with career and life advice including one Mr. McGuire who utters one of the film’s iconic lines when advising Ben about what job industry he should invest in, ”Plastics.”
Ben also encounters Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father’s business partner. Under the guise of driving her home, the neurotic, virginal Ben is caught off guard when she makes some blatant sexual advances at him, “Mrs. Robinson you’re trying to seduce me.
Aren’t you?” He initially resists but quickly changes his mind and the two begin a summer time affair, meeting at the Taft Hotel. Ben falls into a monotonous routine of tanning by the pool during the day and sleeping with Mrs. Robinson at night.
When his father demands to know what he’s doing, Ben replies, “I’m just drifting here in the pool. It’s very comfortable just to drift here.” Ben’s parents and Mr. Robinson are adamant about Ben taking the Robinsons’ daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross) out on a date. Mrs. Robinson, however, is even more adamant that Ben NEVER take her out.
Faced with the choice of taking Elaine out or having to sit through a dinner party with his family and the Robinsons, Ben opts for the date. He does his best to come off as a rude, cold jerk to Elaine but eventually lets his guard down and falls in love. Mrs. Robinson will have none of it and threatens to expose their affair if he persists with seeing Elaine.
Everything about The Graduate is superior to just about any American film you’ll see today. Mike Nichols revolutionary filmmaking, aided by Robert Surtees’s camerawork, is still akin to experiencing film for the first time.
There is not a wasted shot or moment in the film. Along with the potent, witty screenplay by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, Nichols crafts one of the wittiest social satires ever as he pokes fun at the emptiness of the upper class society in the late 1960s. Ben’s parents offer him nothing but artificiality.
He is given a beautiful Alfa Romeo as a graduation gift and is paraded around in a scuba suit, a gift from his father for his 21st birthday, like a trained monkey. Mr. McGuire, when advising him about the “great future in plastics” is essentially offering him a lifetime of plastic artificiality.
Try and take notice of how water is used as a metaphor for society. Throughout much of the beginning, Nichols frames Ben outside or near water (swimming pools, fish tanks) but never in water. It isn’t until he is literally forced in the water by his parents that he decides to become one of the plastic people in society, albeit briefly.
Throughout his affair with Mrs. Robinson he is seen tanning on the diving board directly over the water and is seen frequently swimming. With the exception of Citizen Kane, seldom had such symbolism been used before in film.
The legendary opening shot of Ben gliding through the L.A. airport on a moving handrail while “The Sounds of Silence” plays is shot so that it appears that Ben is on a human conveyor belt like a prepackaged piece of human meat being prepared to be deposited into the world. Ben is not presented as the typical 60s college graduate.
He’s not into sex, drugs or rock and roll or really anything else. He’s presented as a blank slate: one with no interests, desires or beliefs. There is no mention of Vietnam or the turbulent nature on college campuses with the exception of “outside agitators” being mentioned briefly. He feels like his college education was a waste and detests the game of life where “the rules don’t make any sense” and are “being made up by all the wrong people.”
His transformation is all the more moving and engaging to behold as he finds something he finally wants and believes in: Elaine. The subject matter, a younger man having an affair with a married, older woman then falling in love with the married woman’s daughter, was quite taboo at the time and the ensuing controversy only helped to generate interest in the film.
The film is filled with iconic lines of dialogue that most of us know by rote as well as legendary images that have become ingrained in our visual memory. Whether it’s the famous “You’re trying to seduce me” moment shot under the sexy knee of Mrs. Robinson, the shot of Ben standing in a hotel room while Mrs. Robinson puts on her pantyhose in the foreground (again making use of those great legs), Hoffman fending off marriage guests at a church with a cross or the final, ambiguous shot of Ben and Elaine sitting at the back of a bus after triumphing over the materialist society, The Graduate is one of those films where you can learn or notice something new with each repeat viewing. Nichols would win Best Director at the Oscars that year. Ironically, both The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde lost Best Picture to the more conventional In the Heat of the Night.
Dustin Hoffman (in his first screen role) would make his career off of Benjamin Braddock. This was a radical choice in casting at the time for the original source novel had Ben as a typical southern California blonde hair, blue eyed pretty boy. Hoffman was more of an everyman that audiences could relate to.
Like all of us at that age, especially after college when the rest of our life is staring us in the face and we have no idea what to do, Hoffman perfectly captures the anxiety, awkwardness, sadness and uncertainty that we all have at 21.
He does not have much dialogue yet makes Ben one of the more unique roles of his career with his use of hilarious voice tics full of anxiety and the legendary Simon and Garfunkel music as his conscience and soul. This would mark the first time that pop music was used extensively as the soundtrack for a film and it was one of the film’s huge selling points.
The music, much like the film, is timeless and provides the perfect emotional window into Ben’s soul even when he himself cannot express it. It’s a credit to Hoffman that he makes Ben into a sympathetic hero that you root for even though he compulsively follows Elaine in the third act when the action shifts to Berkeley in the hopes of convincing her to marry him. This would most certainly be considered stalking in today’s society and gives the film a little bit of a creepy edge.
Anne Bancroft is deliciously sexy and alluring as the original MILF, Mrs. Robinson. Her predatory nature in the way she pursues Ben is personified by the animal prints that she wears throughout the film. She is at once both a cold-hearted seductress and, in her best scene, a vulnerable little girl who had to forsake her youth due to an unplanned pregnancy.
The gorgeous Katherine Ross is able to make Elaine into more than just an object of Ben’s desire despite the fact that her role is underwritten and does not appear under nearly halfway through the film. Look for Murray Hamilton (Mayor Vaughan from Jaws) as Mr. Robinson, Norman Fell (Three’s Company) as a grumpy Berkeley landlord who detests “outside agitators” and Richard Dreyfuss in a blink and you’ll miss him cameo as an all too eager to call the cops Berkeley student.
The extras on the disc include two holdovers from the 25th Anniversary laserdisc version; the two 23-minute featurettes “The Graduate at 25” and “One on One With Dustin Hoffman.” Both deal with the history of the film including how the roles were cast and the lasting impact the film still has. The new extras include two new featurettes: the 9-minute “The Seduction” and the 26-minute “Students of The Graduate.” These deal with the influence the film has had on current filmmakers like Harold Ramis, Marc Forster, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
Also included are two new commentaries, one with Hoffman and Katherine Ross and another with Steven Soderbergh interviewing Mike Nichols. Both are great listens with the Soderbergh/Nichols commentary being the must-listen to of the bunch for true fans of the film. Nichols goes into great detail about every aspect of the filmmaking and reveals some surprises that some may not have known.
The original theatrical trailer is included as well as a second bonus CD containing the four Simon and Garfunkel songs used in the film “The Sounds of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “Scarborough Fair/Canticle,” and “April Come She Will.”
Despite some moments and actions that date the film, The Graduate still stands as the best of all coming of age films and is one of the rare classics that can transcend the time it was made in and feel like it is eternal.
The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition) is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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