The Graduate
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Revisiting THE GRADUATE after many years, it's easy to imagine the absolute nuke it delivered to mainstream audiences of the day.
Director Mike Nichols (The Birdcage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) shows little interest in traditional storytelling, reveling in long visual interludes to Simon & Garfunkel songs with no interest for momentum.
Dustin Hoffman is the anti-leading man, fumbling his way sexually and wallowing in worry for his post college future.
Characters pop in and out of the story, spouting dialogue that seems to come from another time or planet. For Hoffman's Benjamin, their generation may as well be an alien species. The screenplay by the brilliant Buck Henry (What's Up, Doc?), from an earlier version by Calder Winningham (Paths of Glory, Little Big Man) delivers one classic line after another, winding a deliberate path toward a raucous ending that must have been hard to understand to older audiences in 1967.
Benjamin Braddock is graduating college and is beyond worried about what comes next. While his wealthy parents throw a posh cocktail party to honor him, he hides in his bedroom staring at his fish tank. I loved how no one at the party was his age. Hoffman is hilarious as he does his damndest to escape back to his room.
Only Mrs. Robinson (a stunning & perfect Anne Bancroft) finds a way to attract his attention, eventually asking him to drive her home. It's a ride that will change both their lives.
"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me!" has become part of American film legend, teeing up a taboo and absolutely hilarious affair that keeps spiraling out of control long after you think the ripples have stopped.
When Benjamin goes on a date with Mrs. Robinson's daughter Elaine, things really take a turn. Katherine Ross is jaw dropping as Elaine, showing the same screen presence she would opposite Newman and Redford two years later in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".
Classic moments abound and Hoffman carries the core of the film effortlessly in his breakout role as Benjamin. He was 30 at the time, only six years younger than Bancroft, but the two definitely make you feel like you're watching a much larger age difference.
Murray Hamilton (Jaws) is terrific as Mr. Robinson and I had forgot his and Benji's scene late in the film. Nichols moves from comedy to drama fluently, and his cast never falters.
William Daniels (1776) is hilarious as Hoffman's Dad, going from proud socialite to befuddled father and delivering memorable lines along with way. His goading of his son to come out in a full wet suit is flawless.
The best small part of all goes to the skilled comic timing of writer Buck Henry as the desk clerk at the posh hotel in which Benjamin has decided to carry on his affair with Mrs. Robinson. Henry's reactions and facial expressions are legendary.
Watch closely for Richard Dreyfuss in the scene where Norman Fell and a bunch of college age kids come to Benjamin's door after Elaine screams at the top of her lungs.
Back in 1967, the film made over $104 million at the box office, only the third film in history at the time to do so, following "Gone with the Wind" and "The Sound of Music".
Roger Ebert laughed often about his take at the time of the film's release that the Simon & Garfunkel songs were "largely unmemorable". LOL You can't always get it right, eh Roger?
Watching the film again, almost 60 years after it's release, the work of everyone in front of and behind the camera is astonishing, creating a modern film masterpiece that's as funny and interesting as it was its opening weekend in theaters.
The finale is so improbable that it's somehow perfect. At the time, I remember my parents deriding the fact that Benjamin holds his arms out, crucifixion style, against the glass walls of the church. Nichols has explained many times that the position was never calculated in that way, it was just meant to be dramatic and cause less noise in the filming, after Hoffman's first take pounding on the glass was so violent that the film crew was almost thrown out of the location.
But long before that wild finale, the opening credits let you know immediately that you're in for something different, as a camera tracks Benjamin landing in LAX, with famed cinematographer Robert Surtees's camera right next to him from plane to taxi as credits roll. Surtees (Ben-Hur, The Sting, The Last Picture Show) shows off for the entire film, with split focus and tracking shots that were stunningly new at the time.
Like most classics, THE GRADUATE will be analyzed, picked apart and examined for decades to come. Henry, Nichols and cast captured lightning in a bottle, a counter culture blockbuster that captured the rebellion against the establishment and older generation of the late sixties.
To do so with such style, humor and panache has rarely been equaled.
THE GRADUATE gets an A+.
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