The Graduate - C or D

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