The Graduate (1967)
About This Movie
A directionless college graduate drifts through his parents' wealthy Los Angeles world, begins an affair with an older family friend, and then falls for her daughter, setting all three lives on a collision course. Mike Nichols captured the anxious emptiness of having every advantage and no idea what to do with it. Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence' plays over Benjamin's blank stare, and the combination defined a generation's uncertainty.
Why It's a Classic
Nichols bridged Old Hollywood and New Hollywood with a film that uses formal innovation (jump cuts, underwater photography, rack focus through glass) to express internal states rather than external action. Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock is passive to the point of paralysis, and his inertia makes him a surprisingly radical protagonist for 1967. Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson is far more complex than the seductress stereotype; her boredom, alcoholism, and desperation make her the film's most fully realized character. The final shot, where Benjamin and Elaine sit on the back of a bus with their triumphant expressions fading into uncertainty, is one of the great ambiguous endings in cinema, suggesting that escape from convention leads not to freedom but to another kind of emptiness. The film's influence on the American New Wave was immediate and lasting.
Fun Fact
Dustin Hoffman was thirty years old playing a twenty-one year old, and the producers initially wanted Robert Redford, whom Nichols rejected because he looked too confident and attractive to play a confused outsider. The 'plastics' line, delivered by a family friend at Benjamin's graduation party, became one of the most quoted lines in American film. Anne Bancroft was only six years older than Hoffman in real life. The swimming pool shots, where Benjamin drifts in scuba gear while his parents' party continues above, were filmed by putting the camera in a swimming pool with a specially built underwater housing.
Parent Note
The film depicts an affair between a young man and an older married woman, with sexual content that is suggestive rather than explicit by modern standards. There is mild language and some alcohol use. The themes of alienation, generational conflict, and sexual manipulation are adult in nature. The film's pacing and cultural references are very much of the late 1960s. Suitable for older teens and adults.
Quick Facts
- Year
- 1967
- Type
- 🎬 Movie
- Category
- Coming of Age
- Age Group
- Adults (Ages 18+)