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The Graduate Sponsored by Airport Printing 1967 | PG | Drama, Romance | d. Mike Nichols Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross |
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| With its Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, southern California locations, and counter-cultural message, Mike Nichol’s The Graduate both defines the rebellious mood of the late 1960s and endures as an American classic. Dustin Hoffman plays Ben Braddock, a recent college graduate smothered by his parents’ expectations and uncertain about his future, who is seduced into an affair with one of his parents’ married friends (Mrs. Robinson), played memorably by Anne Bancroft. Along the way, Ben falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross), setting up a showdown between the older and younger generations. Hoffman’s naïve and stammering Ben plays perfectly against Bancroft’s jaded Mrs. Robinson, and the film captures all the disaffection and anxiety of its generation. While the film initially angered college students, who felt it ignored the primary subject of social protest, the Vietnam War, it quickly won over huge numbers of young viewers, who came to see Ben and Elaine as anti-establishment heroes. After recent screenings in Manhattan, director Mike Nichols reported that the film still resonates with college students today. With a screenplay co-written by the great Buck Henry (of Get Smart fame), The Graduate is at once hilarious and peppered with trenchant social commentary. - Tom Schmid | ||