50 years later, 'The Graduate' is a study in the power of obsession
Kenneth Turan and Justin Chang discuss Mike Nichols' landmark 1967 film, "The Graduate," starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.
Seeing "The Graduate" again decades after an initial viewing is, appropriately enough, like attending a college reunion. Films are in a sense like old friends, and revisiting them years later inevitably raises the question of whether what you once enjoyed still brings you pleasure.
With "The Graduate," which will play theatrically across Los Angeles on April 23 and 26 in a new 4K digital restoration presented by Fathom Events as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series, the results are mixed.
MORE: 50 years after 'The Graduate,' restless Benjamin Braddock still speaks to young men — and women
There is no question that from a film history point of view "The Graduate" deserves this kind of 50th anniversary respect. Adapted by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry from the Charles Webb novel, it sprang initially from the passion of producer Lawrence Turman, who bought the rights to the book for $1,000 and sent it unsolicited to director Mike Nichols, who later said it was "the only time in my whole life that that ever happened successfully."
The result was a major box office success, nominated for seven Oscars including best picture and acting nods for stars Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross, plus an Oscar victory for Nichols. Its effects on American culture are considered to be even more pronounced.
'The Graduate'
The famous seduction scene from 1967's "The Graduate," starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.
Not wearing well [are] Benjamin's obtuse parents and their Southern California friends, all mercilessly skewered as well-meaning monsters of self-involvement.
Among other things, "The Graduate" featured landmark soundtrack use of Simon & Garfunkel songs like "The Sound of Silence" and "Scarborough Fair," made "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me" into a national catchphrase, helped pioneer a change in the nature of leading men and became a touchstone for young people feeling concerned, as recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock is, about their future and their place in the adult world they are reluctantly entering.
But looked at now, "The Graduate" is frankly a film you admire more than actually enjoy experiencing. Dark, pitiless and despairing, it plays stranger and more distant to me today than it did back in the day. So much so that one wonders if that was the plan from the beginning, when the fact that its mildly transgressive attitude seemed fresh and new disguised its essential nature.
Ben's falling for Elaine [turns] this lost young man into more of a scary stalker than lovestruck swain.
Inevitably helping with the hiding was the formally impressive, borderline glib facility with the cinematic medium Nichols displayed in this, only his second film as a director.
That skill was enhanced by the fact that Nichols' below-the-line collaborators were an extraordinarily gifted group. A tip of the hat, please, for cinematographer Robert Surtees, editor Sam O'Steen, production designer Richard Sylbert and Tony-winning costume designer Patricia Zipprodt. Even the hair stylist was legendary: Sydney Guilaroff, who had done Grace Kelly's hair for her wedding to Prince Rainier and had credits ranging from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Some Like It Hot."
But none of this expertise could counteract the fact that Nichols' work always evinced a kind of coldness and distance that I've never, well, warmed to and that stood in the way of my completely embracing "The Graduate" this time around.
While my younger self may have identified with just-graduated Ben and his overly earnest concerns with his future and his self-indulgent determination to tell everyone in sight "I have some things on my mind," he now seemed callower than I remembered.
Also not wearing well were Benjamin's obtuse parents (played by William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson) and their Southern California friends, all mercilessly skewered as well-meaning monsters of self-involvement.
Things pick up immeasurably, of course, with the arrival of Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson, the wife of Ben's father's law partner and a woman whose predatory nature is deftly underlined by her preference for leopard-skin garments.
Both Bancroft and Hoffman (in reality only six years apart in age) had New York theatrical experience and play beautifully off each other. The choreographed interplay between her sureness and his awkwardness ("You're the most attractive of my parents' friends," is his idea of a compliment) remains immaculate.
Good as these actors are, the relationship between their characters is by definition a premise, setting us up for what comes later, and what comes later is a very different story.
Dark, pitiless and despairing, ['The Graduate'] plays stranger and more distant to me today ... So much that one wonders if that was the plan from the start.
Things do seem promising when the Robinsons’ college-age daughter Elaine (Ross) comes down from Berkeley, if only because she's the most recognizably human character in the entire film.
But not only does Ben's falling for Elaine seem completely arbitrary, even by movie standards, but the act also deranges him in a not particularly appealing way, turning this lost young man into more of a scary stalker than lovestruck swain.
Merciless toward its characters as well as the audience, "The Graduate" plays on a new viewing like a subversive, anti-romantic film best categorized as a bleak parody of the happily-ever-after genre. The next time it gets rereleased, this examination of the power of obsession should be put on a double bill with Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Vertigo." Believe it or not, it belongs there.
Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson: why The Graduate unites warring generations 50 years on
Watching the classic 1967 Dustin Hoffman film in a post-Brexit world of boomerang children lends it a whole new resonance. Which is hardly surprising when you consider the parallels with the era in which it was created
Thursday 15 June 2017 12.30 BST Last modified on Friday 16 June 2017 15.31 BST
It was the Summer of Love, the first one. Young people were making their voices heard in politics and revealing the widening chasm between themselves and their parents’ generation. The film that summed it all up was The Graduate, released in the US in December 1967, starring Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, a despondent 20-year-old who moves back home after finishing college, and Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson, the much older women who seduces him.
Half a century on, and in the wake of a pensioner-powered Brexit vote and a Corbyn-inspired youthquake, all that inter-generational drama feels fresh once more. The film that sums it all up? It’s still The Graduate, soon to be back in cinemas and just as alluring, sophisticated and as emotionally unsettling as an affair with your parents’ best friend would be.
Cinema reissues can always rely on nostalgic appeal, but there’s so much more to appreciate about The Graduate, when watched through the lens of 2017. Then, as now, the political agency of 18-25-year-olds was a hot topic. That January, Time magazine named “25 and under” as their “man of the year” and it made a big impression on Dustin Hoffman, a 29-year-old Jewish actor best known for his work on the stage. He later recalled referencing the magazine’s cover in an early conversation with The Graduate’s director, Mike Nichols. “I said: ‘Did you see this week’s Time? That’s Benjamin Braddock!’ Nichols replied: ‘You mean he’s not Jewish?’ ‘Yes, this guy is a super-Wasp. Boston Brahmin.’ And Mike said, ‘Maybe he’s Jewish inside. Why don’t you come out and audition for us?’ ”
Other actors under consideration for the lead included Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen and Robert Redford, yet Hoffman’s protestations only served to convince Nichols just how perfect he was. In retrospect, it’s impossible to disagree. Much of the film’s humour derives from Benjamin’s evident discomfort in most social situations, contrasted with the glib glamour of his parents’ cohort. The New-York-based, Los Angeles-raised, Hoffman could also readily relate to Benjamin’s experience of moving back into his parents’ home after a period of living independently. The actor had done the same when The Graduate’s low-budget shoot began in LA, but lasted only a week before moving to a hotel, at his own expense. For the debt-saddled generation-rent graduates of 2017, that often depressing “boomerang” back home is even more familiar, just without the hotel opt-out.
When Benjamin arrives at his parents’ lavish Pasadena mansion, he finds they’re throwing a party, ostensibly in his honour, though everyone present is at least twice his age. His father sits him down to ask about his future plans: “I don’t know … I want it to be …” stammers Benjamin. “To be what?” asks his exasperated father. “Different,” replies Ben. One Mr McGuire steers Benjamin outside, so he can have his full attention to say, “just one word: Plastics”. Back inside, the handshakes are firm, the ties are loud and the air is fogged with cigarette smoke. In other words, this is a crowd so thoroughly Brexit-y, not even the fact that they’re American (and the EU wouldn’t formally come into existence for another 26 years) could stop them voting to leave. You can appreciate why Benjamin would feel so ill at ease.
That may be where the sympathies of a 2017 audience end, however. Many of today’s graduates would envy the kind of laid-on opportunities that Braddock rejects. A job for life in the growth field of plastics sounds very attractive compared with low pay and zero-hour contracts. Yet whether the young are excluded from their parents’ party by economic barriers or cultural ones, there is always room for a coming-of-age film that asks: what is so good about growing up? In the age of lacklustre “adulting”, The Graduate must be even more welcome.
Back in mid-60s Hollywood, the film’s producer, Lawrence Turman, struggled to drum up interest in his project. In 1964, he spent his own money optioning the original novel of the same name by Charles Webb, and then followed two years of being turned down by every major studio in town. The grownups didn’t get it, because the grownups never do, but Turman and Nichols had enough personal affinity with the material to carry it through. Turman had initially followed his father into the garment trade before veering away from that preordained path, while Nichols had been studying medicine when he decided to try showbusiness instead. Both men were staking their professional futures on the potential of a book and both, just as Benjamin Braddock did, wanted that future “to be different”.
Once complete, The Graduate baffled early screening audiences, prompting the movie promoter Joseph E Levine to suggest a tour of college campuses to help build “word of mouth”. It worked, and by early 1968, the film was attracting crowds worthy of a Corbyn rally. Writing in US weekly the Saturday Review later that same year, the film critic Hollis Alpert recalled how “lines extended around the corner all the way down the block, much like those at the Radio City Music during holiday periods – except that the people waiting for the next showing were not family groups but mostly young people in their teens and early 20s … it was as though they all knew they were going to see something good, something made for them.”
This was the kind of success that the Hollywood establishment could not ignore, and the film received seven Academy Award nominations. Nichols went on to win best director. Today it is at No 22 on the list of highest-grossing films of all-time at the US box office, after inflation, above more traditional crowd-pleasers such as Jurassic World, Forrest Gump and The Avengers.
But if The Graduate had been just the angry cri de coeur of youth, it would have dated as fast as the Braddocks’ flock wallpaper. What is special about this film is the empathy it shows for an older generation – as personified by Mrs Robinson – even in the midst of such scathing satire. The fuss recently made over the age difference between Brigitte Macron and her husband demonstrates that we have never grown out of our salacious interest in the older woman, but we’ve never bettered the original Mrs Robinson either. She is both alluring and disgusting, predatory and pitiful and, despite her unsubtle fondness for animal prints, so much more complex than all the pornified milfs and cougars that came after.
Given that the film-makers themselves were hardly teenagers – Nichols was 35 and screenwriter Buck Henry was 36 – this sensitivity makes sense. At 35, Bancroft was only six years older than Hoffman, and eight years older than Katharine Ross, who played her daughter, Elaine. So Benjamin may have been too callow to sympathise much with a “broken-down alcoholic” Mrs Robinson, but from their thirtysomething vantage point, the film-makers could clearly see both sides.
Nichols also appreciated that it would take a veteran’s experience to be as innovative as he hoped to be with the film’s camerawork. To that end, he hired Robert Surtees, then a 60-year-old cinematographer, who had been working in Hollywood since before the invention of the talkies. “We did more things in this picture than I ever did in one film,” Surtees later wrote in an article for an industry magazine. “We would do whatever we could think of to express the mood, the emotion of the scene.”
What is that mood, that emotion? Any film that opens to the lyric “Hello darkness, my old friend,” from Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence was never going to be a knockabout comedy, yet The Graduate is both consistently funny and tragic on an oedipal scale. Like all good comedies, it ends in a wedding, and yet the tonal ambiguity continues beyond that happily-ever-after, and into a shot of the fleeing couple sat side-by-side on the back seat of the bus, their faces flickering between triumph and doubt.
Maybe how you feel about The Graduate reflects the stage you have reached in your own life when you watch it. For older viewers, it’s a reminder that you, too, were young once. For the young, it’s a reminder that you too will grow old soon enough. If ever there were a film to unite the warring generations in mutual self-pity, here it is. Again.
The Graduate is released in the UK on 23 June.
Vijftig jaar The Graduate: de eerste nerd als held
Achtergrond
Filmklassieker ‘The Graduate’ bestaat vijftig jaar en maakt nog steeds nieuwe fans. Elke generatie herkent zich graag in dit vleiende, geïdealiseerde portret. „Probeert u me te verleiden, mevrouw Robinson?”
Peter de Bruijn
25 juli 2017
The Graduate bestaat vijftig jaar en de klassieker van Mike Nichols maakt tot op de dag van vandaag nog nieuwe, jonge fans. Waarom is niet zo moeilijk om te raden. Er zijn weinig films die de jeugd zo idealiseren en op een voetstuk plaatsen.
Iedereen boven de dertig is een afschrikwekkende karikatuur in de film. Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), die een verhouding krijgt met de oudere, cynische Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) en daarna verliefd wordt op haar dochter Elaine (Katharine Ross), begaat weliswaar ook stommiteiten, maar niet omdat hij een slecht karakter heeft. Zijn stuurloosheid is volledig op het conto van de oudere generatie te schrijven, die de wereld zo onleefbaar voor hem heeft gemaakt.
De ostentatieve onschuld en naïviteit van The Graduate, afgezet tegen de louche en corrupte wereld van de volwassenen, wordt nog eens enorm uitvergroot door de poeslieve samenzang van het popduo Simon & Garfunkel op de beroemde soundtrack – een van de eerste die eigentijdse popliedjes centraal stelde. Het nieuwe liedje dat Paul Simon voor de film schreef – het nostalgische Mrs. Robinson – is slechts in rudimentaire aanzetten te horen, want dat nummer was nog niet klaar en zou pas op het album Bookends verschijnen, nadat de film al was uitgekomen.
Jeugdig narcisme
The Graduate was een van de grootste filmhits van de jaren zestig. Eindelijk hadden jongeren hun eigen film – fans gingen er drie, vier keer achter elkaar naar toe en juichten hun held Benjamin in de bioscoop luidruchtig toe. Maar ook het oudere publiek kwam kijken: de zogeheten ‘generatiekloof’ was een van de meest besproken thema’s van dat moment, The Graduate was een film die je gezien moest hebben om mee te kunnen praten. De film haalde 100 miljoen dollar op aan de bioscoopkassa en staat tegenwoordig op de 22ste plaats van meest succesvolle Amerikaanse films aller tijden. Dustin Hoffman – in zijn eerste hoofdrol – was van de ene op de andere dag een ster.
Niet iedereen stond bij de film te juichen. De grote filmcritica Pauline Kael zette Mike Nichols weg als „een demagoog” die louter inspeelde op het narcisme van de jeugd. Kael, die schreef voor het tijdschrift The New Yorker, ging er zoals zo vaak met gestrekt been in, maar ze had een punt. De hele aanname van de film is dat de verhouding tussen Benjamin en Mrs. Robinson onnatuurlijk en een beetje vies zou zijn. „Mrs. Robinson, dit is het meest perverse wat ik ooit in mijn leven heb gedaan”, verklaart Benjamin op zeker moment plechtig. Maar waarom eigenlijk? Dat komt nu, in het tijdperk van Emmanuel en Brigitte Macron, toch een beetje curieus over. In de jaren zestig was zo’n affaire tussen twee generaties misschien zoiets als slapen met de vijand; vanwege die veelbesproken ‘generatiekloof’.
Nichols houdt het perspectief van Benjamin vrijwel de hele film lang aan, tot vlak voor het einde. In de schitterende laatste scène zitten Elaine en Benjamin onwennig en onzeker naast elkaar in een bus – niet samen, maar ieder voor zich. Dat is een van de weinige momenten dat Nichols meer afstand neemt. Dat levert meteen het mooiste moment van de film op.
Cool en kettingrokend
De meest in het oog springende elementen zijn eigenlijk ook het meest gedateerd. En toch staat The Graduate na vijftig jaar nog steeds overeind. Hoe kan dat? Omdat veel van de details nog steeds zo prachtig zijn. Dat is allereerst te danken aan de briljante komische timing. Nichols was weliswaar pas 35 toen hij de film regisseerde (naar een gelijknamige, weinig succesvolle roman van Charles Webb). Maar Nichols had al een carrière achter de rug als succesvolle komiek in het theater – in een duo met Elaine May – en hij was de meest succesvolle jonge komedieregisseur op Broadway. Zijn timing is zo goed dat veel scènes een plezier blijven om te zien, ook als je de grappen al kent. The Graduate is een van de laatste, pikante sekskomedies. Dat genre was geen lang leven meer beschoren. Met het slechten van veel seksuele taboes werkten ook de meeste olala-grappen niet meer. Maar The Graduate is gemaakt op het moment, dat de seksuele toespelingen nog echt grappig zijn.
Dan zijn er de acteurs. Nichols omschreef The Graduate als de moeilijkste film die hij ooit heeft gecast. Met andere acteurs zou de sfeer en de strekking van de film compleet anders zijn uitgepakt. Doris Day werd benaderd voor de rol van Mrs. Robinson, maar had onoverkomelijke bezwaren tegen de bedscènes. Robert Redford, een klassieke leading man, lobbyde hard voor de rol en dat zou eveneens een heel andere film hebben opgeleverd dan met Hoffman. De keuze voor Redford was misschien logischer geweest – want waarom valt zowel Mrs. Robinson als haar dochter Elaine eigenlijk zo als een blok voor Benjamin? Maar dat zou toch een minder bijzondere film hebben opgeleverd.
Anne Bancroft speelt de rol van haar leven – enigszins tot haar eigen frustratie, want Mrs. Robinson overschaduwde al haar andere werk. Ze maakte haar alcoholische, kettingrokende en zelfhatende personage zo cool en intrigerend, dat er toch nog enig tegenwicht ontstaat voor het egocentrische perspectief van Benjamin. Ook Hoffman greep zijn kans: hij schakelt bijna achteloos tussen dramatische en komische scènes, in beide is hij een virtuoos. Benjamin is afwisselend zelfingenomen en onzeker, stoer en timide, lethargisch en doortastend, koud en gevoelig; opstandig en meegaand. Nuchter bezien vormen al die eigenschappen misschien geen coherent geheel, maar Hoffman laat de kijker toch in zijn personage geloven.
Het eerste dramady-succes
The Graduate is misschien te beschouwen als de eerste, succesvolle ‘dramady’: een film met zowel dramatische als komische elementen, die elkaar perfect in balans houden. Dat is in hoge mate de verdienste van Hoffman.
De keuze voor Hoffman ging destijds in tegen alle wetten van de showbusiness. Acteurs met zijn fysiek kwamen niet in aanmerking voor hoofdrollen. In het eufemisme van die tijd behoorde hij tot de acteurs met een ‘etnisch’ uiterlijk, waarmee impliciet een ‘joods’ uiterlijk werd bedoeld. Verder dan in bijrollen als ‘karakter-acteur’ konden zulke acteurs meestal niet komen.
Maar Mike Nichols wilde een hoofdpersoon zien die trekken had van hemzelf: hij was een kind van joodse immigranten, die als zevenjarige in 1939 vanuit nazi-Duitsland naar Amerika was gevlucht. In de jaren vijftig waren de idolen van de jeugd de stoere Marlon Brando en de gevoelige, maar toch ook steeds stoere James Dean. Nu kreeg Dustin Hoffman gillende meisjes achter zich aan.
The Graduate is de eerste grote speelfilm met een uitgesproken nerd in de hoofdrol, een nerd die ook nog eens het meisje krijgt. Sinds The Graduate is dat klunzige type een bona fide filmheld. Dat was pas echt een revolutie.
Op 14 augustus verschijnt de digitaal gerestaureerde jubileumeditie van The Graduate op dvd bij Studiocanal.