The Graduate
The Graduate is one of my all-time favorite films, in my personal top five. The fortieth anniversary of its release has just passed, and with it much reminiscing by those who participated. I just read two articles, one in Vanity Fair and one in Entertainment Weekly, about the genesis and production of this film. For Christmas I received the 40th-Anniversary DVD (I already owned a previous issue) and popped it in last night to listen to the commentary by director Mike Nichols, who is joined by Steven Soderbergh.
I've seen the film many times, certainly more than twenty, but one thing that someone said on the featurette is true--you can watch this film over and over again and it feels like you're watching it for the first time each time. There is something new to discover on each viewing. One interesting thing I heard in Nichols' commentary was that he envisioned Mrs. Robinson as some sort of jungle beast (hence the leopard-print clothing, and the abundance of tropical plants in the TV room where she first tries to seduce Benjamin). Or just how long some of the takes are--some of them are several minutes long.
The Graduate was a huge hit upon its release, but few could have predicted it. Nichols, along with writer Buck Henry, made some unconventional choices, chiefly the casting of Dustin Hoffman as the lead. In the book by Charles Webb, Benjamin is a tall, blond WASP, and Robert Redford was the first name most people thought of. But Nichols told Redford he wasn't right for the part. "You can't play a loser," Nichols told him. Redford responded that of course he could. Nichols then countered, "Oh yeah, have you ever struck out with a girl?" Redford said, "What do you mean?"
What Nichols did was cast an outsider as an insider who thinks of himself as an outsider. As Soderbergh remarks, that piece of casting changed the way leading men were thought of. Others have written that Nichols, a Jew, cast Hoffman, a Jew, in a role from a family of WASPs to further amplify his outsider-ness. Maybe so.
The Graduate was certainly a product of its times, in its expression of the alienation of youth culture. Though Benjamin doesn't have long hair or burn his draft card, he is nevertheless eager to avoid a future that would involve his parents' way of life. The line early in the film, one of the most famous in all cinema, in which he is advised to enter plastics, is really the whole thing in a nutshell. Benjamin wants nothing of the artificiality of his parents' world, which is really made of plastic.
The film was also groundbreaking in technical areas. Few American films in the mainstream used the kind of cutting that The Graduate did, in particular the montage that finds Benjamin in one quick cut climbing on top of a pool float and then Mrs. Robinson, or the pre-lapping dialogue that begins in one scene before the visual cut takes place. Soderbergh also discusses the use of music--Nichols recalls that it was his brother who gave him a Simon and Garfunkel LP, and that he was listening to it for three months before he realized, "Schmuck! You're listening to the soundtrack for your movie!" It wasn't usual for films to use contemporary hits on the soundtrack of films, and Nichols uses the songs in their entirety--sometimes repeating them.
And then there's the ending. Ben rescues Elaine from her marriage to a clone of her parents and off they go, hopping on a bus, giddy with anticipation. But Nichols let the camera roll, and soon their excitement fades into an expression of uncertainty, a classic "What now?" moment. As Soderbergh points out, it's an ending that makes one rethink what has seen before, and without it it wouldn't have had nearly the impact.
Though The Graduate is a product of sixties' youth rebellion, I think it is fresh today as it was forty years ago. There isn't a bad scene in the picture, and some of the lines zing as if they were written yesterday.
I've seen the film many times, certainly more than twenty, but one thing that someone said on the featurette is true--you can watch this film over and over again and it feels like you're watching it for the first time each time. There is something new to discover on each viewing. One interesting thing I heard in Nichols' commentary was that he envisioned Mrs. Robinson as some sort of jungle beast (hence the leopard-print clothing, and the abundance of tropical plants in the TV room where she first tries to seduce Benjamin). Or just how long some of the takes are--some of them are several minutes long.
The Graduate was a huge hit upon its release, but few could have predicted it. Nichols, along with writer Buck Henry, made some unconventional choices, chiefly the casting of Dustin Hoffman as the lead. In the book by Charles Webb, Benjamin is a tall, blond WASP, and Robert Redford was the first name most people thought of. But Nichols told Redford he wasn't right for the part. "You can't play a loser," Nichols told him. Redford responded that of course he could. Nichols then countered, "Oh yeah, have you ever struck out with a girl?" Redford said, "What do you mean?"
What Nichols did was cast an outsider as an insider who thinks of himself as an outsider. As Soderbergh remarks, that piece of casting changed the way leading men were thought of. Others have written that Nichols, a Jew, cast Hoffman, a Jew, in a role from a family of WASPs to further amplify his outsider-ness. Maybe so.
The Graduate was certainly a product of its times, in its expression of the alienation of youth culture. Though Benjamin doesn't have long hair or burn his draft card, he is nevertheless eager to avoid a future that would involve his parents' way of life. The line early in the film, one of the most famous in all cinema, in which he is advised to enter plastics, is really the whole thing in a nutshell. Benjamin wants nothing of the artificiality of his parents' world, which is really made of plastic.
The film was also groundbreaking in technical areas. Few American films in the mainstream used the kind of cutting that The Graduate did, in particular the montage that finds Benjamin in one quick cut climbing on top of a pool float and then Mrs. Robinson, or the pre-lapping dialogue that begins in one scene before the visual cut takes place. Soderbergh also discusses the use of music--Nichols recalls that it was his brother who gave him a Simon and Garfunkel LP, and that he was listening to it for three months before he realized, "Schmuck! You're listening to the soundtrack for your movie!" It wasn't usual for films to use contemporary hits on the soundtrack of films, and Nichols uses the songs in their entirety--sometimes repeating them.
And then there's the ending. Ben rescues Elaine from her marriage to a clone of her parents and off they go, hopping on a bus, giddy with anticipation. But Nichols let the camera roll, and soon their excitement fades into an expression of uncertainty, a classic "What now?" moment. As Soderbergh points out, it's an ending that makes one rethink what has seen before, and without it it wouldn't have had nearly the impact.
Though The Graduate is a product of sixties' youth rebellion, I think it is fresh today as it was forty years ago. There isn't a bad scene in the picture, and some of the lines zing as if they were written yesterday.
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