Rating: PG
Genre:
Comedy Drama
Release Date: 12/07/1999
SubTitles: French/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: 5.1/2
Run Time: 106 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: MGM
"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.
~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
