The Art of Film #2: The Graduate

The Graduate was a massive critical and commercial success on release in 1967, becoming the highest grossing film of that year in North America, winning the Best Director Oscar for Mike Nichols and receiving six other Academy Award nominations. Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Webb, it is a coming of age story with a twist that is full of both comic and tragic possibilities.

A young Dustin Hoffman plays newly graduated Benjamin Braddock – naive, awkward, uncertain what to do next and deeply embarrassed by his proud and conventional family – as he navigates the challenges of adult life that unexpectedly include seduction by the bored and worldly Mrs Robinson, wife of his father’s business partner. Complications ensue when Benjamin falls for the one woman that Mrs Robinson will do anything to keep him away from, her daughter Elaine. The ensuing conflicts lead to a memorable conclusion when Benjamin finally takes action and goes all out to capture Elaine’s heart on the very day she marries another man . . .

We want to consider this film as it was at the time – described by renowned critic Roger Ebert as “the funniest American comedy of the year” – and returning to it (or viewing for the first time) more than half a century later. Has it aged well?

Just some of the questions we will discuss in our review of the film as a whole and the selected clips we will watch together:

• What can we learn about the social mores of middle-class North America in the 1960s? How much have things changed? Does the scandal of an extramarital affair resonate with us differently in the 2020s?
• How do we perceive Mrs Robinson – cheating wife, sexual predator, unfulfilled domestic prisoner – and how differently would we respond if the seducer were an older male and the graduate female? Incidentally, Anne Bancroft was just 35 to Dustin Hoffman’s 30 when the film was made!
• How do the life challenges facing a twenty-one-year-old in 2024’s digital world compare to those of 1968 (when the Vietnam War was ongoing and young men in the US were still liable to be drafted into the armed services)?

JOINING DETAILS:

• A three-hour LitSalon Study on the Art of Film.
• Sunday 8 December 2024, 3.00-6.00pm (UK/BST) on Zoom.
• Discussion led by Julie Sutherland and John Allemand.
• £65 for three hour study, including background notes and resources (N.B. participants in this study will be limited to a maximum of 14).
• The Graduate is widely available on DVD/video and to download from Amazon and other platforms.