The Graduate

Well coo cco kachoo,
So I decided to see the original again after catching that mindless Jennifer Aniston flick and it was wierd. The only scene I had remembered clearly was when they’re in the bar and Hoffmann asks Ross if she can twirl tassels. Ok, that bit is fooking funny, but the rest…

I mean he takes her on 1 date and falls in love and stalks her around the campus which is a tactic she responds to??

So I know it’s a cultural icon but it’s before my time, can any mature dopers tell me, was it considered a romatic movie back in the day?

It was a movie about the cultural gap between the younger generation and the older generation. It was about discovering that there is nothing there when you grow up other than the same immaturity and emptiness that you spent your whole childhood wanting to escape. You couldn’t wait to grow up, and now suddenly you find that being grown up just means having all the problems you had before, but no mommy to cushion the blows for you. It was one of the few movies of the time period that mentioned hardly anything about the period — no protests, no war, no race riots. And it gave a new meaning to the word “plastic”. It was a coming of age film in which coming of age meant coming out of your delusions. What he graduated from was childhood.

Well sure, I understood that, the ennui was timeless.

It was the 3rd reel, when he woke up to the possiblilty of love that struck me as strange. Today his behavior would be grounds for a restraining order, so I’m asking if the ending was taken at face value as romantic back in the day

My girlfriend thinks it was the only role in which Dustin Hoffman looked attractive.

She’s 44 and I’m 26. Just thought that was worth adding.

here’s an anecdote from IMDB:

Anne Bancroft was only 6 years older than Hoffman

Not so much romantic as pathetic. His discoveries about adulthood were an Emperor has no clothes embarrassment to adults. His pursuit of her was a desperate attempt on his behalf to put some meaning into his rite of passage. His hope was that love would be the exception, and would be something special that he could have now that he couldn’t have had a couple years before. I don’t know of anyone who for even a minute took it as a love story. The theme of The Graduate is that growing up sucks.

That’s a very succinct summary of the film. The only person in the film who is really alive, who really follows through on desires and passions is Mrs. Robinson. Benjamin Braddock is a directionless loser; Elaine is a vapid, proto-Stepford Wife bot who can’t even maintain umbrage that her boyfriend is sleeping with her mother; Mr. and Mrs. Braddock can’t provide any more guidance or support other than showering Ben with needless (but expensive) presents. And the final scene–after Ben “rescues” Elaine from her wedding–is priceless. They’re on the bus, flush with having done “something”…and then both of them look incredibly uncomfortable with each other and as if they have no idea where to go from here. A veritable comment on the “failure” of The Movement. If Ben’s lucky, he’ll go into "plastics’; he hasn’t the talent or enthusiasm to do anything else.

Ah, for the days when Hoffman actually tried to act. Gene Hackman, his fellow Pasadena Playhouse alumni, could and still can run rings around him any day.

Stranger

It’s been a while since I saw the film. (It was on the other night, but I didn’t watch it.) I was born in the '60s. Dad was a Naval officer, and mom was The Officer’s Wife. We lived in a comfortable middle-class neighbourhood in San Diego. We weren’t wealthy like the Braddocks, but I can vaguely relate to their attitudes. The late-'60s and early-'70s were a time of transition. Mom was Little Miss Cocktail Dress. My sister was a hippy. So as a child I saw the differences between The Perfect Nuclear Family and The Disaffected Youth.

It seems to me that the older generation, which lived through the Depression, WWII, and the Atomic Terror, were rather materialistic. The successful family had a house in a good neighbourhood, a new car or two, liked to dress nicely, etc. They lived through tough times and now they had leisure time and extra money to spend on ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Now, we didn’t live a Braddock lifestyle on a Navy salary. I never got meaningless expensive presents. (Though I did get a new motorcycle when I was 12.) But I can recognise the Braddocks’s attitude. I think they were true to their time and status.

Benjamin is a little older than my sister was. As I said, she was a hippy. So I can relate to the way he looked at things. He’s young, idealistic, and bored with the things his parents think are important. To me, Benjamin and Elaine seemed to fit into this era where their generation was in transition. The war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and the recognition that the Older Generation was responsible for making The Bomb made them want to buck the status quo.

But yeah, I see them running into reality. Bennie and Elaine will find out that idealism doesn’t put food on the table. Benjamin will go into business, probably become a middle-manager. Elaine will become an alcoholic and will cheat on him. They’ll be divorced.

I’ll have to pull this one off of the DVD shelf and watch it again though.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

If I may do one more shameless plug of my 50 Most Important Hollywood Films listing, I had selected this movie as number 30 (between #29, Bonnie and Clyde, and #31, 2001: A Space Odyssey).

I watched this on tv the other night. I had watched it on tv when I was a teenager and was pretty traumatized by it. Several years later, I heard someone refer to it as a comedy, which blew my mind. A comedy? Really?

Then after watching it the other night, I can see a few uncomfortable moments of wry humor, but that’s outweighed by the unpleasantness.

For me the worst part was when Ben takes Elaine to the strip club. What was that about? I felt awful for her.

Anyway, like it or don’t like it, it hardly seems like a comedy.

Ebert agrees with you.

…And I agree with him, though I would have given it half a star or so less.

Well, that might be a first. I generally find that Ebert seems to review movies by the same title and featuring the same actor but with totally different plot lines and developments than the films I see. I don’t know how he finds all the alternative “rip-off” films but vary rarely does it seem we watch the same movie. I can’t even bear to read his review of Ronin; he clearly found some cheap Hong Kong knock-off–probably Ronyn or maybe Ronan The Barbarian–and based his review on that.

Stranger

Actually, what you wrote reminded me so much of his review that I thought at first that you’d forgotten to provide a cite.

How that movie got into the AFI’s Top 10 list I can’t imagine.

Nah, I only rip off The Onion A.V. reviews.

I’d have to say the same for Gone With The Wind and On The Waterfront (the latter being an excellent film, but hardly one of the top 10 American films). I can’t take seriously any list that doesn’t include the groundbreaking Brazil and Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Rear Window somewhere in the Top 10 (or at least Top 20).

Stranger

I don’t know if I could find ten people who think The Graduate is a better movie than Rear Window.

The Simon and Garfunkel music is what made The Graduate. It set the tone perfectly for what was being shown on the screen.

“Elaine!!!” :smiley: