June 2003

The Graduate

• Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katherine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Elizabeth Wilson, Buck Henry, Norman Fell
• Directed by: Mike Nichols
• Theatrical release: 1967
• DVD release: 1999
• Video: Widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
• Released by: MGM Home Entertainment

Plastic!
-- Career advice

Young Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has just finished college and returned home for a restful summer before graduate school. He’s under a lot of stress. Everyone wants to know about his goals for the future; he feels as if no one understands him; and he has undertaken a worrisome and emotionless affair with the wife of his father’s partner, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). To make matters worse, the cuckolded Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) keeps insisting that his daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross) and Benjamin should go out on a date. Mrs. Robinson forbids Benjamin to see her daughter, threatening to tell everyone about their affair. When Benjamin falls in love with Elaine, Mrs. Robinson carries out her threat. Elaine, furious and hurt, returns to college at Berkeley and Benjamin decides to move there to try to win back Elaine’s trust and love.

In the years before 1967, the story above would have been slotted directly into the drama-cum-soap-opera category. It took the genius comic Michael Igor Peschkowsky, aka Mike Nichols, to take a story about seduction, sex, and anomie and make it hilarious as well as gripping. Nichols had started as a comedian with his friend Elaine May, offering startling improvisational comedy that was intelligent and piercing. The two of them helped form Second City, put on a Broadway show, and performed numerous times on TV. Critics called the duo "the world’s fastest humans." Their ability to improvise was legendary. For a great example of what they could accomplish, check out their first album, Improvisations to Music [Mercury 314 558 455-2], a work of uncanny intellect and profound human understanding. What perfect native talents for a director. When he and May broke up their act in 1961, that’s exactly where he set his sights.

Broadway provided his first opportunity. He directed Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple, amongst others. When the reigning superstar couple of the era, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, wanted to film Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Nichols stepped in. He took a one-room, one-night, stage-bound play, made it work as a film, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. He had already been working on The Graduate, but wasn’t having any luck with casting. Nichols envisioned the role of Benjamin being filled by a hunky, blonde California type. New projects kept shoving The Graduate on the back burner until he met Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman caused an entire re-thinking of the film. Nichols was smart enough to see it and made Benjamin suffer from an overwhelming sense of being dorky, incongruous, incompatible, and out of place.

Nichols rehearsed The Graduate like a play, carefully working out all the comic timing (check the scene in chapter 6 where Benjamin is renting a room from Buck Henry). He planned all the important cross cuts (see chapter 8 and the beginning of chapter 9) in pre-production, aiming for maximum drama in minimum space. For example, notice how often Benjamin is either in his dark bedroom or in the pool, then watch how Nichols juxtaposes those scenes with Mrs. Robinson. He’s telling us that Benjamin feels out of place, even while having sex.

Nichols surrounded himself with the cream of Hollywood. His cinematographer, Robert Surtees, had already won three Academy Awards. The film is full of his touches, but in chapter 13, when Elaine figures out Ben has been having an affair with her mother, watch how Surtees keeps us disoriented by switching his shallow focus to Mrs. Robinson, then centering back on Elaine and s-l-o-w-l-y bringing her (and us) back into focus.

Production designer Richard Sylbert had been trained by the celebrated William Cameron Menzies and had won the Academy Award the year before, working with Nichols on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? His ability to distill meanings into images gave us such smart concepts as Mrs. Robinson in leopard-skin underwear and Benjamin’s spaces always being dark and monochromatic.

When The Graduate was released, everyone was shocked at the use of Simon and Garfunkel songs. Pop songs as a soundtrack! What’s the world coming to? Of course, now, that’s mainly what we get. I only wish that the newer filmmakers used the music as intelligently as Nichols.

Of course, none of this would mean anything if the actors hadn’t been so perfect. We now think of Hoffman as one of our finest actors, but in 1967, he was unknown. What experience he had came from the stage, but that fit perfectly with Nichols’ background. Hoffman so inhabited the role that many of his idiosyncrasies, established during rehearsal, became an integral part of Benjamin Braddock. In chapter 6, while talking to Mrs. Robinson in the hotel, listen to Hoffman’s little sounds of terror. They were an accident in rehearsal, but when Hoffman made them, Nichols laughed so hard he cried. Now they are sprinkled throughout the film. Another example is when Benjamin puts his hand on Mrs. Robinson’s breast (chapter 7). Nichols had put Hoffman up to the idea but it came as a total surprise to Bancroft. She started laughing, and so did Hoffman and Nichols. Hoffman, as you would do on stage when you can’t stop laughing, turned away from Bancroft and walked toward the far wall. When he still couldn’t stop laughing, he started banging his head on the wall. Nichols loved it, kept it, and the scene is one of the funniest in the film.

Anne Bancroft was only six years older than Hoffman. As the only bona fide star (she had already won the Best Actress Academy Award reprising her Broadway role in The Miracle Worker), she received top billing. Her portrayal of Mrs. Robinson was brave for a 36-year-old actress. At times thrillingly seductive, she also had to appear wet from the rain with her makeup running and her hair hanging limp. She had to make an adulteress, who was willing to shatter her daughter’s budding love affair, seem sensitive. Watch chapter 10 for a master class in making an unsympathetic character into a three-dimensional human.

Katherine Ross was drop-dead gorgeous, but never a great actor. Her best moment is in chapter 19. Nichols builds tension as Benjamin bangs on the church windows and we see, but can’t hear, the livid reaction of her parents and fiancé yelling back. Her scream always sends shivers up my back. Luckily, Nichols was smart enough to leave her role ephemeral.

The supporting cast members are ideal, especially Mr. Robinson and Benjamin’s parents. Fans of future stars should head to chapter 15. When Elaine screams in Benjamin’s room, a little guy runs up and says, "Shall I get the cops?" That was an uncredited Richard Dreyfuss.

By the way, Nichols had originally thought of Robert Redford as Benjamin and Doris Day (!) as Mrs. Robinson. Thank God for small favors. We got the better cast.

I’ve made much of Mike Nichols’ virtuosity. Interestingly, others have ascribed far deeper meanings to a few of his ideas, some of which appear to be untrue. The number one "symbolic" interpretation of The Graduate has Benjamin as a Christ substitute, with proof coming in chapter 19 as he assumes an arms-outstretched, crucifixion stance, while he bangs on the windows at the back of the church. In an interview with Dustin Hoffman, included on the DVD, he tells the truth. The minister at the church threatened to throw the whole crew out when Hoffman began savagely thumping on the glass. Apparently a church member had donated it and the minister wouldn’t be satisfied by the promise to replace anything broken. A prop man recommended that Hoffman spread his arms out to beat the glass, assuring the minister that would prevent any breakage. So much for the Christ symbolism.

Another frequently discussed element is the expression on Elaine and Benjamin’s faces at the end of the film. What did they mean? Were they gazing into an uncertain future? Had they made a mistake? In truth, no one, not even Nichols, knows. It turns out that Nichols had been shouting at Hoffman and Ross to laugh, apparently in a threatening manner. They laughed until they thought the scene was over, and then looked uncomfortable because they were a little scared. When Nichols saw the rushes, he loved the sense of uncertainty. The ending was put together in the cutting room.

The most important part of The Graduate, and the reason that it is far more than a relic of the ‘60s, is the respect for and truth about its characters. Those who have had the chance to see it in their early twenties as well as their forties will know what I’m talking about. See it at 21 and you’ll empathize with Benjamin. You’ll resonate with his "no one understands me; no one knows how I feel; I’m the only person in history with my thoughts" way of looking at life. Ben is lost in a world of his own concoction. See it in your forties (or later) and you can still feel the old feelings. But now, with the experience of an adult, you can understand the Robinsons, Braddocks, even Norman Fell’s character. In your youth, Mrs. Robinson seems a hot but pathetic momma. See it later, and she is fascinating -- vacillating between terrifyingly witty and expertly manipulative. She drinks too much, aims straight at whatever she wants, protects her daughter like the leopard she costumes herself in, and has just enough tragedy in her past to seem a little vulnerable. Try to imagine another film aimed at the generation gap that leaves you feeling allegiance to your current age, no matter which side of the gap you are on.

MGM Home Entertainment inexplicably decided to release The Graduate in letterbox rather than anamorphic widescreen, even though the original film was shot in Panavision, which is an anamorphic system. That might be the reason that the picture is not very sharp. The soundtrack has been remastered in Dolby Digital 2.0 and sounds OK. The extras are wonderful, including interviews with Dustin Hoffman (from the 1993 Image laserdisc release), Katherine Ross, Buck Henry, and producer Lawrence Turman. But where is Mike Nichols? Couldn’t we at least have an interview? Maybe a showing of the PBS American Masters show about Nichols, or a question and answer with his wife, Diane Sawyer? Why not have Paul Simon talk about the songs? Where is Anne Bancroft? By way of legend, she is supposed to be one of Hollywood’s funniest off-the-cuff talkers. Her husband, Mel Brooks, says she is much funnier than he is. Turn her loose in front of a microphone.

Come on, MGM, this is history.

Even with all the missed opportunities in the extras, The Graduate belongs in any serious collection. The film received seven Academy Award nominations (Hoffman, Ross, Bancroft, Surtees, Writing, Best Picture) and Mike Nichols won for Best Director. There was stiff competition that year. Besides The Graduate, we had Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night (the big winner with five awards), Two for the Road, In Cold Blood, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Wait Until Dark, The Dirty Dozen, Dr. Dolittle, Camelot and Barefoot in the Park. Released late in 1967, The Graduate ended up as the number-one movie of 1968. Simon and Garfunkel’s "Mrs. Robinson" spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard chart. More recently, The Graduate placed number seven on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies of All Time and has been revamped for a run on Broadway starring Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson and Jason Biggs (American Pie) as Benjamin.

The Graduate is as classic as they come, and it belongs in any serious film library.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

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