The Graduate

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For the American rock band, see The Graduate (band).
The Graduate
Directed by Mike Nichols
Produced by Lawrence Turman
Written by Charles Webb (novel)
Calder Willingham
Buck Henry
Starring Dustin Hoffman
Anne Bancroft
Katharine Ross
Music by Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel
Distributed by United Artists (UK theatrical)
MGM (US DVD)
Embassy Pictures(US theatrical)
Studio Canal (current rights holder)
Release date(s) Flag of United States 21 December 1967
Flag of United Kingdom 8 August 1968
Flag of Australia 22 August 1968
Running time 105 min.
Language English
Budget $3,000,000
IMDb profile

The Graduate is a 1967 film directed by Mike Nichols based on the novel of the same name by Charles Webb. The screenplay is by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. The film tells the story of Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman), a recent college graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who is seduced by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and then falls in love with her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross).

Contents

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film explores the life of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock shortly after earning his bachelor's degree from an unnamed university in the Northeast. The movie begins at a party celebrating his graduation at his parents' house in suburban Los Angeles. Benjamin is visibly uncomfortable at the party attended by mostly his parents' friends. He remains aloof while his parents deliver accolades and neighborhood friends ask him about his future plans. Benjamin escapes from each person who comes to congratulate him, exposing his seeming embarrassment at all the honors he had won at college. His father's business partner's wife, Mrs. Robinson, asks Benjamin to drive her home, which he reluctantly does. We never learn Mrs. Robinson's first name (or, indeed, the first names of any of Benjamin's and Elaine's parents) during the course of the film (in the novel, we are told that the initial of Mrs Robinson's first name is G).

Arriving at her home, she pleads for him to come inside, saying that she doesn't like to enter a dark house. Once inside, she forces a drink on him, and later exposes herself to him offering to have an affair with him. This scene, known as the "Mrs. Robinson, you are trying to seduce me" scene, as said by Benjamin, is said to be one of the most iconic scenes in the film. Initially flustered, he is immediately shocked by her advances and flees. A few days later he calls her and their affair begins.

Benjamin is clearly uncomfortable with sexuality, but he is drawn into the affair with the older, but still attractive, Mrs. Robinson. Their affair appears to last most of the summer. All of their scenes pass in a musically-backed montage, showing the endless pass of time. One scene is edited so that it appears Benjamin is walking directly from his parent's dining room into the hotel room he shares with Mrs. Robinson. This seems to accent the separation of him and his parents, though they still live under the same roof.

Meanwhile Benjamin is hounded by his father to select a graduate school to attend. Benjamin, clearly not interested in pursuing his studies, shrugs off his father's wishes and spends his time lounging and sleeping with Mrs. Robinson. His affair may serve as an escape from his lack of direction or ambition, and his fear and anxiety of his impending future.

Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin
Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin

Mr. Robinson, unaware of his wife's budding affair, encourages Benjamin to call his daughter, Elaine. Benjamin's parents also repeatedly encourage him to date her. During one liaison, Mrs. Robinson violently forces a promise from Ben to never date Elaine. Whether out of fear of Mrs. Robinson, or sensing that getting involved with the daughter of his lover could be disastrous, he tries to avoid it. However, because of the three parents' persistent intervention, he is essentially forced to date her. Therefore, he tries to ensure his date with her will be a disaster so she would not want to pursue a relationship with him. He drives recklessly, practically ignoring Elaine, and then takes her to a strip club where she is openly offended and silently begins to cry.

After she storms out of the establishment, he is overcome with guilt and pursues her, apologizes, and then kisses her. What follows is a relationship with the young Robinson, exactly what Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson were trying to avoid.

From here, Benjamin's life falls apart. His affair is discovered and, although he follows Elaine to the University of California, Berkeley, where she is a student, he is barred from seeing Elaine any further. She proceeds to become engaged to another man—one her parents find acceptable. However, Benjamin, believing (with some justification) that she loves him, refuses to give up hope, despite warnings from Mr. Robinson and threats of arrest from Mrs. Robinson.

In the famous conclusion of the film, Benjamin undertakes a desperate drive across a distance of many miles to somehow head off Elaine's wedding. He is forced to stop for directions, his car runs out of gas, and he is ultimately forced to run the final few blocks. He arrives just as the bride and groom are exchanging vows, and stands looking down at the couple from an upper window. He begins rapping on the glass and screams "Elaine! Elaine!", but they do not garner much response at first, but when Elaine gives the return cry "Ben!" mayhem ensues.

After a violent struggle with Elaine's parents and wedding guests (Ben armed only with a large cross), Ben and Elaine escape on a public bus. The escaping couple sits smiling at the back of the bus, the other passengers stare at them in mute disbelief, and the movie closes with a shot through the back window of Ben and Elaine's smiles fading to an enigmatic neutral expression, and Simon and Garfunkel's soundtrack.

The original screenplay had the movie opening with Benjamin delivering a valedictory speech at his college commencement. The ceremony is outdoors and Benjamin is using notes on sheets of paper to aid his speech. Having rhetorically asked what the point of college was he begins to explain the reasons are obvious. At that point a gust of wind blows his note sheets off the podium leaving Benjamin unable to explain what it was all about. He is left stammerring at the podium "it's because, it's because..." only to awaken from his dream to find the jetliner he is riding in is about to land. This foreshadowing was not included in the movie and the opening scenes show Benjamin on the airplane as it lands, then standing on the moving walkway in the airport terminal looking lost and forlorn. However, the idea was used for the opening of the film Reality Bites (1994).

Warren Beatty was originally offered the role of Benjamin Braddock, but he turned it down, due to the filming of Bonnie and Clyde. Robert Redford tested for the part, but he and director Mike Nichols decided they needed someone who appeared more uncomfortable with his sexuality. Burt Ward was also offered the role of Benjamin, only to decline because he chose to renew his contract with the Batman television series, subsequently becoming typecast as Robin the Boy Wonder; he has openly regretted turning down the part.[citation needed]

Natalie Wood tested but was turned down for the role of Elaine.

When work on the adaptation of the book began back in late 1962, Marilyn Monroe was slated to play Mrs. Robinson. Patricia Neal was the first choice of the producers, but she turned the role down because she had not yet fully recovered from a stroke. Actress and singer Doris Day was also approached to play Mrs. Robinson, but passed on the offer.

Dustin Hoffman was playing a 20-year-old college graduate, but was actually 29 during filming and 30 when the film was released. Anne Bancroft, whose character is a generation older than Hoffman's, was only six years his senior in real life.

The Graduate was the breakthrough role for Hoffman, whose sole previous film role was in The Tiger Makes Out (1967). His next big successes (and Oscar nominations) came from Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, and All the President's Men.

In the Berkeley boarding house where Benjamin ends up living, the landlord is played by Norman Fell, who would later gain fame as "Mr. Roper" on the popular 1970s sitcom Three's Company. Richard Dreyfuss, still an unknown in 1967, is briefly shown as one of Fell's other tenants. Earlier in the film, Mike Farrell, later a star of TV's M*A*S*H, can be glimpsed as one of the hotel bellhops when Benjamin and Elaine go there. As the other bellhops address Benjamin as "Mr. Gladstone," Farrell's characters asks "Hello. How are you sir?" (This scene comes at 1:04:30 into the movie.)

William Daniels, who played Benjamin's father Mr. Braddock, is famous not only for his role as the voice of K.I.T.T. on the 1980s television program Knight Rider, but also as the obsessive-compulsive surgeon Mark Craig in the 1980s hospital drama St. Elsewhere and as teacher extrordinaire George Feeny in the 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World;

Elizabeth Wilson, who played Benjamin's mother, Mrs. Braddock, was a familiar face on television during the 1970s, guest-starring in such series as All in the Family, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show; among her other film roles, she played a pivotal role in the 1980 workplace comedy Nine to Five.

Murray Hamilton, who played Mr. Robinson, is best known for playing the mayor in Jaws.

Richard Dreyfuss has his first role in this movie, a small and uncredited one, and only one line: "Shall I call the cops? I'll call the cops."

Veteran actresses Marion Lorne and Alice Ghostly appear together in a brief party scene. The pairing was somewhat coincidental, for Ghostly would go on to costar on the sitcom Bewitched, in a role largely designed to replace Lorne's character when that actress died in May 1968.

Some of the exterior shots of Benjamin on the UC Berkeley campus were actually filmed on the campus of the University of Southern California. Other scenes were filmed on the Berkeley campus, on Durant Avenue in Berkeley, and on Telegraph Avenue as well.

The hotel scenes were filmed at the famed Ambassador Hotel. The same hotel in which US Senator and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated the year after the film's release.

In an interview,[citation needed] Hoffman revealed that he was uneasy about the scene in which he pounds on the church window, as the owner of the church had been watching the filming disapprovingly. Apparently, Hoffman's Christ-like pose when banging on the pane was an attempt to minimize its rattling, rather than an intentional religious reference.

The film boosted the profile of folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel, whose soundtrack album (The Graduate Original Soundtrack), on the strength of the hit single "Mrs. Robinson", rose to the top of the charts in 1968 (knocking off The Beatles' White Album).

The theme song of the movie, Sounds of Silence is a melodramatic, slightly mournful tune. It manages to give the movie a sort of tension, which it demonstrates in other arenas. The generational gap is one of these themes which plays out throughout the movie. The songs seem to mainly play during moments of this particular tension, such as the scene when Ben is forced into the pool by his parents in his scuba outfit. The music gives the film a certain quality, without which it would be vastly different. Simon and Garfunkel were referred to as the "voice of a generation," and this is exactly what they provide in the movie for Benjamin and Elaine.

According to a Variety article by Peter Bart in the 15 May 2005 issue, Nichols had become obsessed with Simon & Garfunkel's music while shooting the film. Lawrence Turman, his producer, made a deal for Simon to write three new songs for the movie. By the time they were nearly finished editing the film, Simon had only written one new song. Nichols begged him for more but Simon, who was touring constantly, told him he didn't have the time. He did play him a few notes of a new song he had been working on; "It's not for the movie... it's a song about times past — about Mrs. Roosevelt and Joe DiMaggio and stuff." Nichols advised Simon, "It's now about Mrs. Robinson, not Mrs. Roosevelt."

In the promotional poster for the film, Mrs. Robinson's leg is not that of Anne Bancroft, but of the then-unknown model Linda Gray — most famous for playing Sue Ellen Ewing in the television soap Dallas. Linda Gray went on to play the role of Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of The Graduate in the West End and on Broadway.[citation needed]

Hoffman earned an Oscar nomination for his performance.

The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Film.

The film is consistently in the Internet Movie Database's top 250 films, ranked #9 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Years... 100 Laughs, #7 on their list of 100 Years... 100 Movies, it places #18 on the List of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada (adjusted for inflation), and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

John Reid produced a play in 2000, adapted from the movie, which was a hit both in London's West End and on Broadway and has toured the United States. Several actresses have starred as Mrs. Robinson, including Kathleen Turner, Lorraine Bracco, Jerry Hall,Morgan Fairchild, and Linda Gray. The Broadway production in 2002 starred Kathleen Turner, Jason Biggs, and Alicia Silverstone.

The play often receives media attention due to a sequence that requires the (often notable) actress playing Mrs. Robinson to disrobe and act a scene in the nude. Some productions of the play also incorporate an on-stage topless love scene involving the Mrs. Robinson character.

Charles Webb has written a sequel to his original novel entitled Home School, but initially refused to publish it in its entirety because of a contract he signed in the 1960s. When he sold film rights to The Graduate, he also surrendered the rights to any sequels. If he were to publish Home School, Canal+, the French media company that owns the rights to The Graduate, would be able to adapt it for the screen without his permission. [1]

Extracts of Home School were printed in The Times on May 2, 2006. [2] Webb also told the newspaper that there was a possibility he would find a publisher for the full text, provided he could retrieve the film rights using French intellectual property law.[3] On 30 May 2006 The Times reported that Webb had signed a publishing deal for Home School with Random House which he hoped would enable him to instruct the French lawyers to attempt to retrieve his rights. The novel is due out in Britain in the summer of 2007.[4]

Benjamin Braddock's college is not named in the movie, and various universities have "claimed" him as a fictional alumnus. However, as Webb attended Williams College and Dustin Hoffman is shown wearing a purple Williams tie at the start of the film, the safest assumption is that Braddock was a Williams man.

Some scenes and themes in the film have become deeply embedded in the popular consciousness, even decades after its release, and have been widely parodied. One such scene involves the one-word career advice given to Benjamin by a family friend: "Plastics", offered as a self-explanatory key to a certain life of corporate success.

  • In the 1994 music video for the song “If You Go” Jon Secada plays Dustin Hoffman in a parody. Instead of driving a red 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 like Hoffman, Secada drives a black first generation Camaro until it stops running. The video continues the parage as Secada and the girl (still in a wedding dress) board a public bus.
  • The opening credit sequence of Ben on the moving sidewalk is replicated in the opening of Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown as well as a recent commercial for Geico insurance.
  • Benjamin's Spider runs out of gas
    Benjamin's Spider runs out of gas
    The car that Benjamin drives in the film is a red 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 "Duetto". 1966 was the first production year of the car. The Graduate gave rise to the Spider's fame and longevity, to the point that Alfa Romeo marketed the car in the States as the 'Alfa Graduate'. The Graduate portrays a number of Alfa traits accurately, such as the signature noisy-valved 'Alfa Rasp' of the 1600 at flat-tack, and the famous depitction of the typical Alfa semi-reliability at various stages, in particular the famously non-functional fuel gauge which leaves our hero in the lurch at the critical moment.
  • Anne Bancroft's line "Would you like me to seduce you? Is that what you're trying to tell me?" has been used as a sample in multiple songs, including George Michael's "Too Funky" from 1992 and one of the later versions of Los del Rio's Macarena from 1995.
  • In the opening scene of Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player, a writer, (Buck Henry), can be heard talking to Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), discussing making a sequel to The Graduate with the same actors reprising their roles. Presumably, Mrs. Robinson, now elderly, would be forced to move in with Benjamin and Elaine, who by now have an adult daughter. In 2005, the romantic comedy Rumor Has It was based on the idea that there was a real-life "Mrs. Robinson" and "Benjamin Braddock."
  • In 2005, Rob Reiner released Rumor Has It... in which Jennifer Aniston plays the daughter of a family from Pasadena. Upon realization that it was her family who inspired Charles Webb to write The Graduate, she seeks out Benjamin Braddock's character, whose name is Beau Burroughs, played by Kevin Costner.
  • The famous line, "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me," (and matching camera shot from under Mrs. Robinson's leg) have been referenced many times in parodies. Some examples:
  • The ending scene where Ben crashes the wedding has also been parodied numerous times:
  • In the movie Old School, Will Ferrell's character falls into a pool during a party. The camera then looks up toward the surface and Sounds of Silence is played in the background. This is very reminiscent of the scene where Benjamin wears the scuba suit for his twenty-first birthday.
  • In the film American Pie, some scenes depicting the love affair between Stiffler's mom and Finch is reminiscent of certain scenes in The Graduate, particularly the one when Finch meets Stiffler's mom for the first time while smoking sitting on a stool, cross-legged.
  • In an episode of the television sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, an old friend of Uncle Phil's, named Mrs. Robinson, comes over for dinner. Will goes out with her daughter and afterwards is seduced by and spends the night with Mrs. Robinson.
  • In The Hamptons episode of Seinfeld Kramer asks Jerry to rub suntan lotion on his back to which Jerry replies "Who are you, Mrs. Robinson?"
  • In the strategy game Civilization IV once you discover the technology Plastics the narrator says: "I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.".

In his book The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker criticizes the film saying that it taught an entire generation of American men that the way to gain favor with a woman is pursue them at all costs and ignore them when they say they are not interested; and that this has romanticized stalkers. While a great deal of scholarship is devoted to this film, the most prominent themes critics tend to latch onto are those of gender relations as well as the more generalized historical context of the film, coming as it did in the 1960s at a time when the generation gap was quite pronounced.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Preceded by
A Man for All Seasons		 BAFTA Award for Best Film
1968		 Succeeded by
Midnight Cowboy


v • d • e
Films directed by Mike Nichols

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? • The Graduate • Catch-22 • Carnal Knowledge • The Day of the Dolphin • The Fortune • Gilda Live • Silkwood • Heartburn • Biloxi Blues • Working Girl • Postcards from the Edge • Regarding Henry • Wolf • The Birdcage • Primary Colors • What Planet Are You From? • Closer • Charlie Wilson's War

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