The Graduate

Director: Mike Nichols Mike Nichols

Overview

"Just one word: plastic." "Are you here for an affair?" These lines and others became cultural touchstones, as 1960s youth rebellion seeped into the California upper middle-class in Mike Nichols' landmark hit. Mentally adrift the summer after graduating from college, suburbanite Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) would rather float in his parents' pool than follow adult advice about his future. But the exhortation of family friend Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) to seize every possible opportunity inspires Ben to accept an offer of sex from icily feline Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). The affair and the pool are all well and good until Ben is pushed to go out with the Robinsons' daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) and he falls in love with her. Mrs. Robinson sabotages the relationship and an understandably disgusted Elaine runs back to college. Determined not to let Elaine get away, Ben follows her to school and then disrupts her family-sanctioned wedding. None too happy about her pre-determined destiny, Elaine flees with Ben -- but to what? Directing his second feature film after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Nichols matched the story's satire of suffocating middle-class shallowness with an anti-Hollywood style influenced by the then-voguish French New Wave. Using odd angles, jittery editing, and evocative widescreen photography, Nichols welded a hip New Wave style and a generation-gap theme to a fairly traditional screwball comedy script by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham from Charles Webb's novel. Adding to the European art film sensibility, the movie offers an unsettling and ambiguous ending with no firm closure. And rather than Robert Redford, Nichols opted for a less glamorous unknown for the pivotal role of Ben, turning Hoffman into a star and opening the door for unconventional leading men throughout the 1970s. With a pop-song score written by Paul Simon and performed by Simon & Garfunkel bolstering its contemporary appeal, The Graduate opened to rave reviews in December 1967 and surpassed all commercial expectations. It became the top-grossing film of 1968 and was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor, and Actress, with Nichols winning Best Director. Together with Bonnie and Clyde, it stands as one of the most influential films of the late '60s, as its mordant dissection of the generation gap helped lead the way to the youth-oriented Hollywood artistic "renaissance" of the early '70s.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/05/2005
UPC:	0027616921925
Original Release:	1967
Rating:	PG
Source:	STUDIO DISTRIBUTION SERVS LLC
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Letterbox]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:46:00
Sales rank:	9,315

Special Features

Closed Caption; [None specified]

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dustin Hoffman	Benjamin Braddock
Anne Bancroft	Mrs. Robinson
Katharine Ross	Elaine Robinson
William Daniels	Mr. Braddock
Murray Hamilton	Mr. Robinson
Elizabeth Wilson	Mrs. Braddock
Brian Avery	Carl
Norman Fell	McCleery
Buck Henry	Room Clerk
Walter Brooke	Mr. Maguire
Elisabeth Fraser	Lady
Alice Ghostley	Mrs. Singleman
Marion Lorne	Miss DeWitt
Harry Holcombe	Minister
Lainie Miller	Nightclub Stripper
Eddra Gale	Woman on Bus
Richard Dreyfuss	Berkeley Student
Jonathan Hole	Mr. DeWitt
Buddy Douglas	Bellhop in Hotel Lobby
Frank Baker	Hotel Guest
George Bruggeman	Church Member
Mike Farrell	Bellhop in Hotel Lobby
Donald F. Glut	College Student
Robert P. Lieb	Party Guest/Mr. Loomis - Party Guest
Elaine May	Girl with Note for Benjamin
Eve McVeagh	Party Guest
George DeNormand	Hotel Guest
Bob Eubanks	Newlyweds Game Host,The Newlywed Game Host
Bob Folkerson	Bus Passenger
Laurence Haddon	Mr. Carlson
Ben Murphy	Shaving Fraternity Brother
John Neilson	Actor
Simon and Garfunkel	Performer
Paul Simon	Musician
Dave Grusin	Composer

Technical Credits

Calder Willingham

Buck Henry

Mike Nichols	Director
Calder Willingham	Screenwriter
Buck Henry	Screenwriter
Lawrence Turman	Producer
Joseph E. Levine	Producer
Milt Hamerman	Casting
Lynn Stalmaster	Casting

Editorial Reviews

The image of young Benjamin Braddock appearing at his parents' swank pool party fully clad in scuba gear remains one of the most satisfying images of youthful alienation ever captured on celluloid. Confused, cut off, and trapped in the claustrophobia of trying to figure out what he's going to do with himself, Benjamin is a model of dissatisfied aimlessness caught up in the whirl of parental and societal expectation. Not surprisingly, his character struck a chord with 1967 audiences, and The Graduate became the highest-grossing film of 1968 and a landmark in the cinema of hip, New Wave, antiestablishment disillusionment. While an enduring classic for its perpetual topicality, and a harbinger of similar dissections of youthful disenchantment that permeated the late '60s and 1970s, The Graduate was also remarkable for providing an unrevolutionary revolution. Benjamin is ultimately a bored, confused young man who has an affair with an older woman (played by an actress only six years Dustin Hoffman's senior), discovers he loves her daughter, and impetuously absconds with the girl to a future offering yet more disillusionment. To top it off, Benjamin's not even that great a guy, more of a conflicted muddle than a viable counter-culture hero. He doesn't want to end up like his parents, but he happily drives around in the Alfa Romeo they give him as a graduation present. He even ends up running off with the very girl they picked for him in the first place. But while it's easy for contemporary viewers to regard the film's message as compromised, The Graduate was something new and provocative for late '60s audiences, a slyly wrapped package of antiestablishment sentiment. Benjamin Braddock's very imperfections made him a believable vehicle for youthful malaise in the first place; to a generation disillusioned with the prosperity in which they had been raised by indulgent parents, Benjamin's brand of resentful ennui resonated on a visceral level. In painting a portrait of an imperfect youth rejecting an equally imperfect world, Mike Nichols and Buck Henry offered only satirical possibilities instead of self-affirming answers. Instead of driving off into the sunset in his Alfa, Benjamin and his beloved board a dirty city bus, hesitant to look either at each other or at the future they have chosen.