The Graduate - C or D

That montage of his wasted summer & affair is what sticks in my mind most.

If you watch The Pallbearer (1996) you will see who should play Benjamin.

I love it. It shouldn't be remade except as sci-fi.

"do you want a wood hanger or a wire hanger? they have both."

i never got how benjamin went from not being all that interested in elaine to being desperately in love with her.

I think it feels that way because it takes lots of rom-com cliches and puts them in a (semi) realistic environment, and therefore emphasises how ridiculous, creepy and just plain wrong lots of behaviours that usually get portrayed as lovely and romantic would actually be in real life.

I don't entirely know what to make of it - Mrs. Robinson is actually a great tragic character but in the end she becomes this one-dimensional tiger lady. Ben just seems dull and drunk on his newfound manhood most of the time -- couldn't relate to him much -- and Elaine is completely flat and empty. I laughed at times, and then at other times I also forced myself to laugh - appreciating the comedy without actually feeling it. And ultimately the story is kinda creepy. I agree with the above that he starts to seem like a stalker and not very likable at all. A lot of the *style* of the filming really wore on me - that pronounced pull-away shot that's used over and over again.

AND I FUCKING HATE SIMON AND GARFUNKEL

goodbye, columbus is better.

This is fuckin nonsense

Was that richard dreyfuss tho

yes

RIP Elizabeth Wilson

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/arts/television/elizabeth-wilson-a-character-actress-of-stage-screen-and-tv-dies-at-94.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1H7yD2diAI

btw check out that cast in the original Broadway prod of Picnic

http://ibdb.com/production.php?id=2220

Finally watched this, and I'm gonna join the "its overrated" camp. Blame the countless number of bad Braff-y ripoffs that followed (Tom Scharpling had one of his hilarious meltdowns on a recent Best Show over the film's poisonous legacy), perhaps, although I'm going to have to agree with Kael re: Benjamin's dullness as a character to begin with. Nichols' Oscar win makes perfect sense, though; the film is much better directed than it is written, and the whole "Sound of Silence" montage is a brilliant piece of filmmaking (ditto the celebrated final shot). But Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid is both a lot more searing and a lot funnier, and never congratulates the Grodin character as much as this film congratulates (though not uncritically) Hoffman.

Benjamin's dullness as a character to begin with is kind of the point. He was taken as a hero by dull '60s kids.

Nichols' direction is very good when he's going for laughs, and letting the two stars go. Otherwise a little too cute and consciously nouvelle vaguey.

Much of the comic stuff works, yes. The scene with Buck Henry (including the physical bit with the ringing of the desk bell) is funny. And I amused by seeing Norman Fell and the daffy aunt from Bewitched.

*was amused

Bancroft's pouncy cougar in the first 20 minutes is just conceptually brilliant comedy.

the whole "Sound of Silence" montage is a brilliant piece of filmmaking

I love the "April Come She Will" montage even more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FJaoRLpf7M

I stop caring about the movie when Mrs. Robinson disappears.

No knock on Anne Bancroft, who's great, but no Mrs. Robinson means more Elaine Robinson.

Elaine is a cipher aside from being a Nice Girl in stylish boots.

More like E-lame Robinson

I feel like Everett Sloane in Citizen Kane. Everyone has films that are part of you no matter how aware you are of its flaws. Seeing The Graduate at 17, especially Katherine Ross, is something that stays with you forever.

I get this, and in fact wondered if the film would have meant more to me had I seen it at 19 or 20.

I should also mention that waiting this long to see it also produced another strange effect, in which I recognize many of the scenes and dialogue via clips I've seen of the film, spoofs, etc, so that watching it becomes mostly a matter of seeing how the connecting tissue brings it all together. It's...disorienting.

I've told this story before--I don't think here. Towards the end of high school, after seeing The Graduate a couple of times on TV, I counted it as my favourite film. It really affected me at the time. My second or last year of university, when I, you know, knew everything, I wrote a very dismissive paper on it explaining everything that was contrived about the film, how clueless it was about what was really happening in terms of the war and everything else going on, etc., etc. The professor--who'd made it clear to us that it was his favourite film--gave me a B+ or something, said he was disappointed I hadn't gotten more out of it, and wrote the comment in a way that basically amounted to a resigned sigh. I was so much older then, etc.

elaine is an underwritten character, but ross is fine (in both senses)

Oh, totes mega classic:

http://www.allcarcentral.com/Alfa_Romeo/Alfa_Romeo_Graduate_1988_concorso-it_2007_BBB_0368.jpg

... or did you mean the movie?

Caught the TCM/Fathom Events theatre screening w/friends last night. First time seeing it in about 12 years. Given that distance, and how much I've expanded my film education in that time, the Italian influences are way obvious..lotta La dolce vita, L'eclisse, even some Il sorpasso in the car scenes.

One thing that hasn't changed is "Goddamnit Nichols, could you possibly find some more Simon & Garfunkel songs?" He uses "Scarborough Fair" 4 TIMES (three S & G, one Muzak-y backing track w/flutes) in the space of about ten minutes.

This was playing on a first-run multiplex all last week, and I totally intended to catch it but lethargy won out in the end--downtown, parking, etc. Well aware of its flaws, limitations, and benign distortions, but I never get tired of it (or the avalanche of S&G).

on the novel

http://lithub.com/the-origin-story-of-an-iconic-adaptation-the-graduate/

The late Buck Henry has a lot to say in that Nichols oral bio i'm reading. He and Mike decided to change Ben's family from Pasadena WASPs to Beverly Hills Jews. (But William Daniels still sounds like a Boston Brahmin via his accent.)

Apparently Nichols wasn't on the bus in the final scene, so it was the DP Sam O'Steen who never said "cut."

I liked their look of regret on that final scene on the bus, that kind of made the movie for me

I've always loved the final minute or two. There's one shot in there of everyone on the bus staring back at them that's maybe a little obvious, but the procession of emotions Ben and Elaine pass through makes for the perfect ending.

I've always loved the final minute or two. There's one shot in there of everyone on the bus staring back at them that's maybe a little obvious, but the procession of emotions Ben and Elaine pass through makes for the perfect ending.

I always liked this bit of trivia about that
https://www.dailybulletin.com/2017/12/21/the-graduate-wedding-scene-forever-altar-ed-la-verne-church/

Another happy accident came about during the bus ride sequence, in which Ben and Elaine board, laughing, as passengers stare at him in his sweatshirt and her in her wedding gown.

An array of emotions pass over their faces in the wordless sequence: smiles alternating with terror and blankness as the import of what they’ve done sinks in. That wasn’t scripted.

Nichols had barked at them they had needed to look happy and that they could only do one take because he had traffic shut down for 20 blocks.

And the cameraman on the bus did not know when to cut the scene, so he kept the camera rolling, even as the actors wondered what they should be doing. In the editing room, Nichols realized he had gold, that the sequence — an ambiguous rather than happy ending — was essential to his film’s meaning.

Almost finished the movie-music Zoomcasts my friend and I have been working through the past 15 months. I put The Graduate up there with Scorpio Rising, Mean Streets, A Hard Day's Night, or anything you can name as shaping the pop-music soundtrack.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7GjQxsYlM