The Graduate (1967)

Tagline: This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about his future.

The Graduate movie storyline. After a successful stint away at an eastern college, twenty-one year old Benjamin Braddock returns to his parents’ Los Angeles area home a graduate. Although the world should be his oyster, Ben is instead in a state of extreme anxiety as he has no idea what to do with his life, which is made all the more difficult since everybody asks him what he plans on doing or tells him what he should do.

In his confused state during which he would rather be alone to wallow in self-pity, he is easy prey for the aggressive Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner who he’s known all his life and who seduces him. Thinking about and then eventually succumbing to her advances only adds to his anxiety and confusion as he hides what they’re doing from the rest of the world, and as he needs more than just sex in a relationship, sex which is all she wants from him.

His confusion is lessened but his life becomes more complicated when he is reacquainted with Elaine Robinson, the Robinsons’ daughter who too is home from college at Berkeley and who he has not seen since high school. Despite a rocky start directed largely by the wants of Mrs. Robinson, Ben and Elaine start to fall for each other. In this complicated situation, Ben has to try to figure out how at least to start to strive for what he believes should be that successful post-graduate life.

The Graduate (1967) is one of the key, ground-breaking films of the late 1960s, and helped to set in motion a new era of film-making. The influential film is a biting satire/comedy about a recent nebbish, East Coast college graduate who finds himself alienated and adrift in the shifting, social and sexual mores of the 1960s, and questioning the values of society (with its keyword “plastics”).

The themes of the film also mirrored the changes occurring in Hollywood, as a new vanguard of younger directors were coming to the forefront. Avant-garde director Mike Nichols, following his debut success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) with this second film, instantly became a major new talent in American film after winning an Academy Award for his directorship.

The theme of an innocent and confused youth who is exploited, mis-directed, seduced (literally and figuratively) and betrayed by a corrupt, decadent, and discredited older generation (that finds its stability in “plastics”) was well understood by film audiences and captured the spirit of the times. One of the film’s posters proclaimed the difficult coming-of-age for the recent, aimless college graduate:

The two different generations are also reflected in other dualities: the two rival women (young innocent doe-eyed daughter Elaine and the older seductress Mrs. Robinson), the two California settings (Los Angeles and Berkeley) and S. and N. California cultures (materialistic vs. intellectual), and the division in Benjamin’s character (morally drifting and indecisive vs. committed).

Directed by: Mike Nichols
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Elizabeth Wilson, Buck Henry, Brian Avery, Walter Brooke, Alice Ghostley, Norman Fell, Marion Lorne, Eddra Gale
Screenplay by: Calder Willingham, Buck Henry
Production Design by: Richard Sylbert
Cinematography by: Robert Surtees
Film Editing by: Sam O’Steen
Costume Design by: Patricia Zipprodt
Set Decoration by: George R. Nelson
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: December 22, 1967