The Art of Film #3: The Graduate revisited . . .

We had more applications than available places for our first study focusing on The Graduate in December 2024. We also found that three hours was simply not long enough to consider the film in depth. With this in mind we have decided to revisit the film, this time over two sessions of two-and-a-half hours each (N.B. we are offering a discount for anyone who joined the first study and would like to register for the second, please email litsalon@gmail.com for details).

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 2025’s digital world compare to those of 1968 (when the Vietnam War was ongoing and young men in the US who were not studying at university were still liable to be drafted into the armed services)?

JOINING DETAILS:

• A five hour LitSalon Study on the Art of Film.
• Friday 24 & Friday 31 January 2025, 3.30-6.00 pm (UK/BST) on Zoom.
• Discussion led by Julie Sutherland and John Allemand.
• £125 for two-session five hour study, including background notes and resources (N.B. participants in this study will be limited to a maximum of 10), discount available for those who attended The Graduate study in December 2024.
• The Graduate is widely available on DVD/video and to download from Amazon and other platforms, we will invite participants to view a number of clips during the course of the study.