From novel to film
The Graduate was directed by Mike Nichols, who had made his film debut a year earlier with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. It was based on a 1963 novel by Charles Webb, with a screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. The film opened in New York on 21 December 1967 and spread to wider release in the following weeks, so it counts as a 1967 film although much of its box-office run took place in 1968.
The story follows Benjamin Braddock, a 21-year-old who returns to his affluent Southern California home after graduating from an East Coast college. He is aimless and uneasy. Soon after his homecoming party, a family friend, Mrs. Robinson, seduces him, and he drifts into an affair. Then he falls in love with her daughter, Elaine, and the film turns into a chase that ends with one of cinema’s best-known final shots.
Casting and performances
Dustin Hoffman, then a little-known stage actor, was cast as Benjamin. The choice was unusual, because the character in the novel is a tall, fair, all-American type, and Hoffman was neither. His awkward, hesitant manner became part of the film’s appeal. Anne Bancroft played Mrs. Robinson, and Katharine Ross played Elaine. Bancroft was only about six years older than Hoffman, a fact often noted by viewers who find the generational distance in the story convincing.
Nichols’s direction is notable for long takes, uncomfortable silences and visual jokes, such as Benjamin underwater in his scuba gear at a party. The film mixes comedy with a sense of emptiness. Its famous early scene, in which a guest advises Benjamin that the future lies in “plastics”, has become a shorthand for the period’s materialism.
The soundtrack
The music was by Simon and Garfunkel. Nichols is widely reported to have been playing their records while preparing the film, and he reportedly asked Paul Simon for new material, but no finished new song was ready in time for the first cut. The film uses their existing songs “The Sound of Silence”, “April Come She Will” and “Scarborough Fair/Canticle”, and it includes a fragment of a new song, “Mrs. Robinson”, which was developed further and released in full in 1968. Dave Grusin supplied the incidental score.
The soundtrack album came out in early 1968 and was a notable commercial success, reportedly reaching the top of the American album chart. “Mrs. Robinson” became a number-one single later that year. The pairing of film and folk-rock music was a landmark, showing that a feature could use popular songs to define its emotional tone. In this period, albums by Bob Dylan and the Beatles were treated as serious statements, and the film’s use of Simon and Garfunkel’s work took advantage of that attitude. Rolling Stone magazine, which began publication in November 1967, was among the new outlets covering the audience that cared about both music and film.
The generation gap
The phrase “generation gap” was widely used in the late 1960s, and The Graduate is often described as its screen emblem. Benjamin’s parents and their friends are comfortable, status-conscious and unreflective. Benjamin has no clear idea what he wants but knows that he does not want what they offer.
It is worth being careful about what the film does and does not say. It is not a counterculture film. Benjamin does not join the American counterculture, does not protest the Vietnam War, and does not seem to think about the Selective Service draft that was a worry for young men of his age. He drives an Alfa Romeo, lives in a swimming-pool suburb and spends much of the film unsure of what to do. The unhappiness is private rather than political. That may be why the film worked so well: it caught a mood of dissatisfaction among prosperous young people without committing to a program.
Some critics at the time and since have also pointed out that the film is a comedy of embarrassment, and that its young lovers are not especially wise. The final bus scene, in which the two sit silent and their elation fades, is often read as a hint that escaping the older generation is not the same as knowing what to do next.
Reception and awards
The film was a major commercial hit and among the top-grossing films of 1968 in the United States. It received seven Academy Award nominations in April 1968: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. Its only win was Best Director, for Nichols. The Best Picture award went to In the Heat of the Night.
Hoffman’s career took off immediately, and he went on to star in Midnight Cowboy in 1969. The film has remained a standard reference point for coming-of-age stories, and it is one of the 1967 movies most often chosen to represent the cultural shift of that year, even though in tone it is closer to satire than to rebellion.