Classic Film Review: The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft
Mike Nichols Directs Hoffman's Debut and Produces Cinematic Classic
Apr 26, 2009
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) comes home from university bored of life and tired of doing what people expect him to do. However, his life takes off in a very different direction once he begins an affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a family friend, and his outlook on life is forever altered by his experience.
Hoffman, Bancroft Star; Ross Supports
Hoffman is a revelation; his quirky, completely uncomfortable Benjamin like Rain Man in his social awkwardness and reaction to others. This is the film that set Hoffman off toward stardom, and in his delightfully out-of-place performance the actor cemented his place in film history.
Katharine Ross and Anne Bancroft play Elaine Robinson and her mother respectively, with Ross in particular standing out as the innocent Elaine, manipulated and mistreated by Ben's philandering and her mother's seduction. Bancroft is what most people will remember about the film though, the actresses' dark looks forcing through the screen and presenting a woman with no qualms about taking advantage of a younger man or her own daughter.
New Hollywood Encapsulated Through Nichols' Film
Mike Nichols expertly subverts Hollywood archetypes of film-making with The Graduate; such a sexually frank movie, with daring presentations of seduction and adultery, would doubtless have been nipped in the bud ten years beforehand. What Nichols helped achieve was the next step in Hollywood movie-making; that of an unafraid director who sees no problem with sensitive subject matter nor pioneering filming techniques.
"Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?"; there is no person on Earth interested in films that does not know that quote, and besides this, the film features many comedic and sardonic lines of dialogue, peppering the film with a sense of humour that many people would not expect.
Simon & Garfunkel Become Cloying
The soundtrack is a failing of the film, only a slight one mind. Simon and Garfunkel were, at the time of production, a popular band, and commissioning them to make the soundtrack is an idea that has carried forth onto modern times. It's a great idea, but as with newer films like Juno, Nichols elected to repeat the songs over and over, and as a result the effect of the music is somewhat lost amongst the endless repetition of "Scarborough Fair", "Mrs. Robinson", and "The Sound of Silence" in particular.
California seldom seems to have been presented onscreen with such understated emphasis; from the Golden Gate Bridge to Berkeley University, Nichols evokes a sense of space and time, and the interesting fades and angles that the cameras take throughout the movie permeate through the narrative to suggest that at the time, Nichols was a true innovator of visual film.
The Graduate is a movie that speaks to the young, telling not only of the dangers of temptation but also of becoming the person others want you to be, and not the person you want to be.
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