The Graduate

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Needless Commentary: The Graduate
by Christian De Matteo

HUGE

One of my favorite directors, Ron Howard, said in a recent interview, that The Graduate was the movie he went to school on. He went to see the movie as many times as he possibly could just to study every camera angle, every move on the actors' faces and every single second of it.

 And can you blame him? The Graduate is an amazing and deep film, camouflaged in the sheep's clothes of comedy, which it also does with perfection. Doing a review of The Graduate almost seems a completely spurious task. It is, without a doubt, huge.

The Graduate

by Kyle C

Solid

[HUGEREVIEWS WARNING:  THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS A PLETHORA OF SPOILERS.]

Overall this movie was a well made film. The acting and the actors did a great job creating this film. The director did a wonderful job on showing how a person out of college would act.
The narrative was generally simple to follow. The director did an excellent job on not moving to fast from scene to scene. In the evolution of the narrative, Ben gets home from college, and his parents have a party for him, which he doesn’t want to attend. Then Miss Robinson seduces Ben into her room, which makes Ben very uncomfortable. Then a couple days later, Ben calls Miss Robinson and meets her at a hotel to sleep with her. At this point, Ben turns into a man and Miss Robinson’s point of view. After a couple of weeks sneaking around with Miss Robinson, Ben starts to have feelings towards her daughter Elaine. Elaine finds out that they have been sleeping together and doesn’t want to see either of them. Ben then follows Elaine around until he hears of her getting married, and then goes to the wedding. Elaine and Ben then run off together on the bus.
In this film, the director decided to play the same song over and over again, each time the song had a different sound to it. The movie could have done without this song playing over and over again. If the film had had a couple more different songs in it, it would have been a very well rounded film. In a way the music made the movie a little boring to myself. I think the movie could have done better with no music, than with playing the same song over and over again.
In the narrative I think that each character had a different motive. For example, Anne Brancroft’s (Miss Robinson) motive was to have an affair on her husband, and also to control Ben and his decisions. She also didn’t want Ben seeing her daughter for some reason, so she tried to force her daughter into marrying some other guy.
Ben Braddock who was played by Dustin Hoffman had other ideas. I think throughout the movie, he was just trying to find out who he really was. He experimented with Miss Robinson, and also went with his heart, and at the end ran away with Elaine.
Katherine Ross (Elaine Robinson) I think she just wanted to be free for once. Her mother and father had controlled her, her whole life, and she just wanted to do what was right for her. So in the end she went with Ben.
Over all this movie was good, except for the music. I would recommend this movie, for a movie of the sixties. I would give it a seven out of ten.

Yes, THE Paul Simon.  Simon and Garfunkel sing the music heard in this classic film.  Listen for The Sound of Silence, Scarborough Fair/Canticle, and of course Mrs. Robinson.  If you're a fan, may we suggest The Best of Simon and Garfunkel, a collection of every single hit of theirs digitally remastered.  You can buy it from Amazon.com by clicking on the appropriate icon in our store (above).

In Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft's first encounter in the hotel room, Bancroft did not know that Hoffman was going to grab her breast.  Hoffman decided off screen to do it, because it reminded him of schoolboys trying to nonchalantly grab girls' breasts in the hall by pretending to put their jackets on.  When Hoffman did it, director Mike Nichols began laughing loudly.  Hoffman began to laugh as well, so rather than stop the scene, he turned away from the camera and walked to the wall.  Hoffman banged his head on the wall, trying to stop laughing, and Nichols thought it was so funny, he left it in.

 The movie is full of womb imagery.  From Benjamin's constant desire to stay immersed in his parent's swimming pool, to the slow close-up shot of the hips of Katherine's roommate as she brings the "Dear John" letter to Benjamin, to returning to the actual womb of the elder and maternal Mrs. Robinson.

 You know the part when Elaine tracks down Ben in his gloomy room and he causes her to scream, a number of other tenants gather behind the landlord in the doorway?  One of those tenants says, “Shall I get the cops? I'll get the cops...”  That’s Richard Dreyfuss!