The Graduate is rebellious yet classical, understated yet melodramatic, and experimental yet comforting. It is one of the finest examples of New Wave American filmmaking and a movie that still has a lot to say about the urgent need of young people to carve out new worlds separate from those forged by their parents.
StudioCanal’s stunning three-disc 4K UHD collector’s edition of The Graduate, including the iconic Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack, is available from Monday, September 15. Order now.
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Director and winner of five BAFTA Awards, including Best Film, The Graduate (1967) is one of the most celebrated and highly influential classics in modern cinema. Truly iconic and utterly groundbreaking in its unique visual style and its defiant reflection of generational change, and candid discussions on sex, The Graduate changed the face of modern film and the minds of expectant audiences.
Deep in the suburbs of Pasadena, a bored, confused and alienated twenty-one-year-old graduate named Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) awkwardly drifts from moment to moment, in constant turmoil over his lack of direction and an uncertain, impending future. Driven by a desire for experience and desperate to avoid the corporate, deluded, and mediocre world of his affluent parents, Benjamin succumbs to the advances of an older woman and begins an affair with the persuasive and enigmatic Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of one of his father’s business partners. But what starts as a farcical fling becomes painfully complicated when Ben finds himself falling in love with her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross).
In crafting the screen adaptation of Charles Webb’s novel, published in 1963, director Mike Nichols looked to the French New Wave and fellow directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut for inspiration. Yet while The Graduate artistically reflects New Wave European cinema, its voice is defiantly American and its themes global as a young ’60s generation embraced change and defied the expected path their parents had planned for them.
The Graduate premiered during student protests, where University campuses in the United States and Europe embraced direct political action, many for the first time. At the same time, in the United States, opposition raged to the Vietnam War following the introduction of conscription, music transformed into a vehicle for political action, and sexual liberation sat firmly at the heart of the growing counterculture. The Graduate not only held a mirror to all of these seismic social changes; it embraced them.
Hoffman’s Ben and Ross’s Elaine are both caught in the headlights of that seismic social change. They both know that the future their parents have mapped out neither fits their wishes, desires or needs.
In the opening scenes, Ben, played by Hoffman with an understated brilliance, says when asked about his future by his father (William Daniels), “I want it to be… different.” But Ben doesn’t know what that different path is, as his parents smother him. Here, Nichols brings us one of the most uncomfortable and honest scenes in film history, as Ben’s 21st birthday party reflects his internal need to cut the parental strings that restrain him, and his uncertainty about how to do it. But that uncertainty and nervousness is about to change when Mrs Robinson, the outstanding Anne Bancroft, who interestingly was only six years older than Hoffman during filming, coaxes Ben from his awkward teenage cocoon.
There’s no doubt that Mrs Robinson seduces and manipulates Ben, yet her reasons are also rooted in that seismic social change. Mrs Robinson’s husband, the brilliant Murray Hamilton, spends most of his time at the golf club, their relationship now nothing more than a convenience for both parties – even though he can’t and won’t accept that truth. It’s a marriage she gave everything up for, and one that has brought her stability but no happiness. She studied Art at college, and dreamed of a career, yet on becoming pregnant with Elaine, she found herself trapped in a gilded upper-middle-class cage forged by post-war social expectations.
Mrs Robinson wants what her daughter’s generation now has, and Ben is her route to tasting that freedom. Yet there is also a conflict at the heart of Mrs Robinson’s need to escape; she, too, has her daughter’s life mapped out, no matter Elaine’s wishes, and Ben is not part of that plan.
This psychological exploration of change and regret during the many stages of our lives – a theme also beautifully explored in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997), which in many ways feels like a companion piece to Nichols’s film – sees The Graduate rise above any simple genre labels. Part romantic comedy, and part coming-of-age picture, there are also elements of the classic tragedy, particularly in relation to Mrs Robinson’s narrative arc. Add to this Simon and Garfunkel’s melancholic soundtrack, editing that defied conventions and zoom shots that perfectly capture the internal emotions of each character, and Nichols’s The Graduate more than earns its place among the greatest American movies ever made.
The Graduate is rebellious yet classical, understated yet melodramatic, and experimental yet comforting. It is one of the finest examples of New Wave American filmmaking and a movie that still has a lot to say about the urgent need of young people to carve out new worlds separate from those forged by their parents. As Mrs Robinson shouts to her daughter in the final scenes, “It’s too late!” Elaine’s response perfectly captures the beating heart of The Graduate, “Not for me!”
StudioCanal’s new special 3-disc box set offers us a meticulously restored 4K UHD print of The Graduate alongside a 64-page booklet featuring new essays by film writers Christina Newland, Helen O’Hara, David Jenkins, and Simon Brew, a print of the original film poster, and a new artwork designed by Concepción Studios.
Extras Include:
- Audio commentary by Professor Thomas Koebner
- Audio commentary with Mike Nichols and Steven Soderbergh
- Audio commentary with Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross
- Meeting with an Author: Charles Webb
- One-on-One with Dustin Hoffman
- Interview with Producer Lawrence Turman
- The Graduate: Looking Back
- The Graduate at 25
- Students of The Graduate
- Screen Tests
- Scene Analysis
- About the Music
- The Seduction Featurette
Collector’s Edition includes: UHD, BD & CD Soundtrack, 64-page booklet, and two posters. Running time: 106mins. English Language / Cert: 15 / Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired.
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