The film explores the life of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock shortly after earning his bachelor's degree from an unnamed college in the Northeast. The school is widely believed to be Williams College, Webb'sAlma Mater (in the opening sequence of the movie, Dustin Hoffman, playing Benjamin Braddock, is wearing a Williams College tie).
The movie begins at a party celebrating his graduation at his parents' house in Pasadena a suburb of Los Angeles. Benjamin is visibly uncomfortable at the party attended by mostly his parents' friends. He remains aloof while his parents deliver accolades and neighborhood friends ask him about his future plans. Benjamin escapes from each person who comes to congratulate him, exposing his seeming embarrassment at all the honors he had won at college. Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner, asks Benjamin to drive her home, which he reluctantly does. We never learn Mrs. Robinson's first name (or, indeed, the first names of any of Benjamin's and Elaine's parents) during the course of the film (in the novel, we are told that the initial of Mrs. Robinson's first name is G).
Arriving at her home, she pleads for him to come inside, saying that she doesn't like to enter a dark house. Once inside, she forces a drink on him, and later exposes herself to him offering to have an affair with him. This scene, known as the "Mrs. Robinson, you are trying to seduce me" scene, as said by Benjamin, is said to be one of the most iconic scenes in the film. Initially flustered, he is immediately shocked by her advances and flees. A few days later he calls her and their affair begins.
Benjamin is clearly uncomfortable with sexuality, but he is drawn into the affair with the older, but still attractive, Mrs. Robinson. Their affair appears to last most of the summer. All of their scenes pass in a musically-backed montage, showing the endless pass of time. One scene is edited so that it appears Benjamin is walking directly from his parents' dining room into the hotel room he shares with Mrs. Robinson. This seems to accent the separation of him and his parents, though they still live under the same roof.
Meanwhile Benjamin is hounded by his father to select a graduate school to attend. Benjamin, clearly not interested in pursuing his studies, shrugs off his father's wishes and spends his time lounging and sleeping with Mrs. Robinson. His affair may serve as an escape from his lack of direction or ambition, and his fear and anxiety of his impending future.
Mr. Robinson, unaware of his wife's budding affair, encourages Benjamin to call his daughter, Elaine. Benjamin's parents also repeatedly encourage him to date her. During one liaison, Mrs. Robinson violently forces a promise from Ben to never date Elaine. Whether out of fear of Mrs. Robinson, or sensing that getting involved with the daughter of his lover could be disastrous, he tries to avoid it. However, because of the three parents' persistent intervention, he is essentially forced to date her. Therefore, he tries to ensure his date with her will be a disaster so she would not want to pursue a relationship with him. He drives recklessly, practically ignoring Elaine, and then takes her to a strip club where she is openly offended and silently begins to cry.
After she storms out of the establishment, he is overcome with guilt and pursues her, apologizes, and then kisses her. What follows is a relationship with the younger Robinson, exactly what Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson were trying to avoid.
From here, Benjamin's life falls apart. His affair is discovered and, although he follows Elaine to the University of California, Berkeley, where she is a student, he is barred from seeing Elaine any further. She proceeds to become engaged to another man; one her parents find acceptable. However, Benjamin, believing (with some justification) that she loves him, refuses to give up hope, despite warnings from Mr. Robinson and threats of arrest from Mrs. Robinson.
In the famous conclusion of the film, Benjamin undertakes a desperate drive across a distance of many miles to somehow head off Elaine's wedding. He is forced to stop for directions, his car runs out of gas, and he is ultimately forced to run the final few blocks. He arrives just as the bride and groom are exchanging vows, and stands looking down at the couple from an upper window. He begins pounding on the glass and screaming "Elaine! Elaine!". This does not garner much response at first, but when Elaine gives the return cry "Ben!", mayhem ensues.
After a violent struggle with Elaine's parents and wedding guests (Ben armed only with a large cross), Ben and Elaine escape on a public bus. The escaping couple sits smiling at the back of the bus, the other passengers stare at them in mute disbelief, and the movie closes with a shot through the back window of Ben and Elaine's smiles fading to an enigmatic neutral expression, and Simon and Garfunkel's soundtrack.
The original screenplay had the movie opening with Benjamin delivering a valedictory speech at his college commencement. The ceremony is outdoors and Benjamin is using notes on sheets of paper to aid his speech. Having rhetorically asked what the point of college was he begins to explain the reasons are obvious. At that point a gust of wind blows his note sheets off the podium leaving Benjamin unable to explain what it was all about. He is left stammering at the podium "it's because, it's because..." only to awaken from his dream to find the jetliner he is riding in is about to land. This foreshadowing was not included in the movie and the opening scenes show Benjamin on the airplane as it lands, then standing on the moving walkway in the airport terminal looking lost and forlorn. However, the idea was used for the opening of the film Reality Bites (1994).
Casting
Warren Beatty was originally offered the title role of Benjamin Braddock, but he turned it down, due to the filming of Bonnie and Clyde. Robert Redford tested for the part, but he and director Mike Nichols decided they needed someone who appeared more uncomfortable with his sexuality. Burt Ward was also offered the role of Benjamin, only to decline because he chose to renew his contract with the Batman television series, subsequently becoming typecast as Robin the Boy Wonder; he has openly regretted turning down the part.[citation needed]
Natalie Wood tested but was turned down for the role of Elaine. Sally Field was strongly considered for the part, but the role was given to Katharine Ross instead.
When work on the adaptation of the book began back in late 1962, Marilyn Monroe was slated to play Mrs. Robinson. Patricia Neal was the first choice of the producers, but she turned the role down because she had not yet fully recovered from a stroke. Actress and singer Doris Day was also approached to play Mrs. Robinson, but passed on the offer.
Dustin Hoffman was playing a 21-year-old college graduate, but was actually 29 during filming and 30 when the film was released. Anne Bancroft, whose character is in her early 40s, was only six years his senior in real life. Similarly, Katharine Ross, who played her daughter, was only nine years younger than Bancroft.
In the Berkeleyboarding house where Benjamin ends up living, the landlord is played by Norman Fell, who would later gain fame as landlord "Mr. Roper" on the popular 1970ssitcomThree's Company. Richard Dreyfuss has his first role in this movie, a small and uncredited one, and only one line: "Shall I get the cops? I'll get the cops." Earlier in the film, Mike Farrell, later a star of TV's M*A*S*H, can be glimpsed as one of the hotel bellhops when Benjamin and Elaine go there. As the other bellhops address Benjamin as "Mr. Gladstone," Farrell's character asks "Hello. How are you sir?" (This scene comes at 1:04:30 into the movie.)
Murray Hamilton, who played Mr. Robinson, is best known for playing the mayor in Jaws.
Veteran actresses Marion Lorne and Alice Ghostly appear together in a brief party scene. The pairing was somewhat coincidental, for Ghostly would go on to costar on the sitcom Bewitched, in a role largely designed to replace Lorne's character when that actress died in May 1968.
Filming
Some of the exterior shots of Benjamin on the campus were actually filmed on the campus of the University of Southern California. Other scenes were filmed on the Berkeley campus, on Durant Avenue in Berkeley, and on Telegraph Avenue as well. In one shot, the Alpha-Romeo is going west on the upper deck of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, although Hoffman is supposed to be on his way to Berkeley, which is to the east.
The hotel scenes were filmed at the famed Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel in which US Senator and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated the year after the film's release.
While supposedly on his way to interrupt Elaine's wedding in Santa Barbara, California, Ben is shown driving through a tunnel on US highway 101. Humorously, the actual tunnel is on the northbound side of the highway, just north of Gaviota, yet Ben is driving south from Berkeley.
The church used for the Wedding scene is actually the United Methodist Church in LaVerne, California. In an interview,[citation needed] Hoffman revealed that he was uneasy about the scene in which he pounds on the church window, as the owner of the church had been watching the filming disapprovingly. Apparently, Hoffman's Christ-like pose when banging on the pane was an attempt to minimize its rattling, rather than an intentional religious reference.
According to a Variety article by Peter Bart in the 15 May2005 issue, Nichols had become obsessed with Simon & Garfunkel's music while shooting the film. Lawrence Turman, his producer, made a deal for Simon to write three new songs for the movie. By the time they were nearly finished editing the film, Simon had only written one new song. Nichols begged him for more but Simon, who was touring constantly, told him he didn't have the time. He did play him a few notes of a new song he had been working on; "It's not for the movie... it's a song about times past — about Mrs. Roosevelt and Joe DiMaggio and stuff." Nichols advised Simon, "It's now about Mrs. Robinson, not Mrs. Roosevelt."
Marketing
In the promotional poster for the film, Mrs. Robinson's leg is not that of Anne Bancroft, but of the then-unknown model Linda Gray — most famous for playing Sue Ellen Ewing in the television soap Dallas. Linda Gray went on to play the role of Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of The Graduate in the West End and on Broadway.[1]
Awards and recognition
Hoffman earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as did Bancroft and Ross.
The play often receives media attention due to a sequence that requires the (often notable) actress playing Mrs. Robinson to disrobe and act a scene in the nude. Some productions of the play also incorporate an on-stage topless love scene involving the Mrs. Robinson character.
Possibility of sequel
Charles Webb has written a sequel to his original novel entitled Home School, but initially refused to publish it in its entirety because of a contract he signed in the 1960s. When he sold film rights to The Graduate, he also surrendered the rights to any sequels. If he were to publish Home School, Canal+, the French media company that owns the rights to The Graduate, would be able to adapt it for the screen without his permission.[2] Extracts of Home School were printed in The Times on May 2, 2006.[3] Webb also told the newspaper that there was a possibility he would find a publisher for the full text, provided he could retrieve the film rights using French intellectual property law.[4] On 30 May 2006 The Times reported that Webb had signed a publishing deal for Home School with Random House which he hoped would enable him to instruct the French lawyers to attempt to retrieve his rights. The novel is due to be released in Britain in the summer of 2007.[5]
In Robert Altman's Hollywood satire The Player (1992), Buck Henry, co-writer of The Graduate, plays a screenwriter attempting to pitch a sequel to The Graduate to a Hollywood producer. Henry's character reminds the producer that the leading actors are all still alive and envisages a scenario in which Ben, Elaine and Mrs Robinson live together in a ménage à trois.
Some scenes and themes in the film have become deeply embedded in the popular consciousness, even decades after its release, and have been widely parodied.
A family friend, Mr. McGuire, gives Benjamin one-word career advice: "Plastics." Some see this as advice on the key to corporate success--becoming shallow and fake or "plastic," which Ben struggles with and is a recurring theme in the film. But it was also amazing foresight: while plastics were in use in 1967, since then they have come to be the predominant type of material used in consumer products, medical equipment, packaging, and even automobiles. The "plastics scene" was referenced in 1968 in a recruiting poster for V.I.S.T.A.(Volunteers in Service to America, aka "the domestic Peace Corps"); in the B&W poster, a dark picture of Dustin Hoffman as the confused Benjamin Braddock is captioned "Plastics Can Wait a Year", (join V.I.S.T.A).
In the 1994 music video for the song “If You Go” Jon Secada plays Dustin Hoffman in a parody. Instead of driving a red 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 like Hoffman, Secada drives a black first generation Camaro until it stops running. The video continues the parage as Secada and the girl (still in a wedding dress) board a public bus.
Benjamin's climactic drive to get to Elaine's wedding is spoofed in Wayne's World 2 (in which Wayne, like Benjamin, is desperate to stop his lover from marrying another man), Bubble Boy, and an episode of SCTV (in which the driver, played by Bill Murray, turns out to merely be the wedding photographer)
Benjamin bursting into the church to stop the wedding is spoofed in The Secret of Monkey Island. When Guybrush Threepwood enters the Melee Island Church to stop the wedding between his beloved Elaine Marley and the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, the player can choose to make Guybrush scream "Elaine! Elaine!" as in the film.
File:GraduateSpider.jpgBenjamin's Spider runs out of gas The car that Benjamin drives in the film is a red 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 "Duetto". 1966 was the first production year of the car. The Graduate gave rise to the Spider's fame and longevity, to the point that Alfa Romeo marketed the car in the States as the 'Alfa Graduate'. The Graduate portrays a number of Alfa traits accurately, such as the signature noisy-valved 'Alfa Rasp' of the 1600 at flat-tack, and the famous depiction of the typical Alfa semi-reliability at various stages, in particular the famously non-functional fuel gauge which leaves our hero in the lurch at the critical moment.
Anne Bancroft's line "Would you like me to seduce you? Is that what you're trying to tell me?" has been used as a sample in multiple songs, including George Michael's "Too Funky" from 1992 and one of the later versions of Los del Rio's Macarena from 1995.
In the opening scene of Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player, a writer, (Buck Henry), can be heard talking to Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), discussing making a sequel to The Graduate with the same actors reprising their roles. Presumably, Mrs. Robinson, now elderly, would be forced to move in with Benjamin and Elaine, who by now have an adult daughter.
In 1999, the film Other Sister, the ending scene is shown as the two main charaters watch. The same scene is paralled later in the film when Giovanni Ribisi swings from the top of the back of the church, to Juliette Lewis, professing his love for her.
In 2005, Rob Reiner released Rumor Has It... in which Jennifer Aniston plays the daughter of a family from Pasadena. Upon realization that it was her family who inspired Charles Webb to write The Graduate, she seeks out Benjamin Braddock's character, whose name is Beau Burroughs, played by Kevin Costner.
The famous line, "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me," (and matching camera shot from under Mrs. Robinson's leg) have been referenced many times in parodies. Some examples:
In a Spin City episode, Stacy Paterno's aunt (played by Priscilla Presley) tries to seduce James Hobert.
A similar line is said in Van Wilder when he attempts to seduce the Dean for personal gain.
In the Family Guy episode "The Kiss Seen Round the World", newscaster Tom Tucker fabricates an interview with Dustin Hoffman by interspersing footage of Tom with clips from Hoffman's movies, including The Graduate. Dustin is shown saying "You're trying to seduce me--" with the word "Mr. Tucker" then dubbed in over the original "Mrs. Robinson".
In the episode of Roseanne titled "David vs. Goliath," David Healy says the line to Jackie, replacing Mrs. Robinson with Ms. Harris.
The ending scene where Ben crashes the wedding has also been parodied numerous times:
The final wedding scene was replicated almost shot-for-shot in Wayne's World 2 (even down to the use of an Alfa Spider complete with 'Mrs. Robinson' soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel on the radio and using the same church). It was also replicated (or parodied) in "Bubble Boy", in the very same church.
In the Daria episode "Write Where it Hurts", A Scene where Brittany and Kevin get married, Jane crashes the wedding in almost the same style.
In the final advert in a series of Renault Clio ad's which ran for years in the UK, which had become popular due to the characters of Nicole and Papa. In the final advert, British comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer had special cameos. Nicole, supposed to be marrying Vic, has Bob come to crash the wedding and drives her away in a Renault Clio.
In the Monk episode #85, "Mr. Monk and the Wrong Man", Monk twice crashes a wedding, banging on the glass of a locked door and yelling the bride's name.
In the movie Old School, Will Ferrell's character falls into a pool during a party. The camera then looks up toward the surface and Sounds of Silence is played in the background. This is very reminiscent of the scene where Benjamin wears the scuba suit for his twenty-first birthday.
In the film American Pie, some scenes depicting the love affair between Stiffler's mom and Finch are reminiscent of certain scenes in The Graduate (particularly when Finch meets Stiffler's mom for the first time while smoking sitting on a stool, cross-legged). Also during that scene a cover version of Mrs. Robinson plays.
In an episode of the television sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, an old friend of Uncle Phil's, named Mrs. Robinson, comes over for dinner. Will goes out with her daughter and afterwards is seduced by and spends the night with Mrs. Robinson.
In "The Hamptons" episode of Seinfeld, Kramer asks Jerry to rub suntan lotion on his back to which Jerry replies "Who are you, Mrs. Robinson?"
In That 70's Show, after an encounter with Jackie's good-looking but much older mother, Eric remarks: "I wonder if she'd like to watch The Graduate with me sometime."
In the strategy gameCivilization IV once you discover the technology Plastics the narrator says: "I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.".
In the final episode of Survivor: Africa, Kelly Goldsmith quotes dialogue between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson when casting her final vote.
In Big Brother 8 (US), an alliance is named "Mrs. Robinson" as it consists of three younger men and an older woman.
In an episode of Rugrats called Let Them Eat Cake is loosely based on the end scene of the movie [Elaine running away from the wedding but then hooking up with Ben]
Criticism
In his book The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker criticizes the film saying that it taught an entire generation of American men that the way to gain favor with a woman is pursue them at all costs and ignore them when they say they are not interested; and that this has romanticized stalkers. While a great deal of scholarship is devoted to this film, the most prominent themes critics tend to latch onto are those of gender relations as well as the more generalized historical context of the film, coming as it did in the 1960s at a time when the generation gap was quite pronounced.
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