The Novel

Author: Charles Webb (b. 1939)

First published: 1963

The Film

Year released: 1967

Director: Mike Nichols (1931-2014)

Screenplay by: Calder Willingham, Buck Henry

Starring: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Brian Avery, Buck Henry

Context

Coming-of-age stories typically bear witness to a young protagonist’s internal struggles, conflicts with others (especially with parents and parental figures), professional expectations, and social and sexual mores. Very few narratives have captured the spirit of coming of age quite like Mike Nichols’s film The Graduate (1967), adapted from Charles Webb’s 1963 novel of the same name. The story hinges on the high-achieving yet unmotivated Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), who spends his first summer after graduating from an unnamed East Coast college living with his parents in Southern California. He spends his days and nights of existential angst lounging by the pool and engaging in a secret affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father’s business partner and mother of his future girlfriend (Katharine Ross).

Benjamin Braddock has been interpreted by film and literary critics as an important symbol of the confusion, struggle, disillusionment, and resistance that troubled the “Baby Boomer” generation in the late sixties. According to many critics, Benjamin’s characterization parallels the infamously tormented teen Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951). In fact, this comparison between Benjamin and Holden in a New York Times book review by Orville Prescott (30 Oct. 1963) caught the eye of Lawrence Turman, the future film’s producer. According to Beverly Gray, two scenes from Webb’s novel motivated Turman to bring this story to the screen: Benjamin gazing up at his parents while underwater in the family pool in his SCUBA gear; and the final image of a disheveled Benjamin sitting alongside Elaine Robinson in the back of a crowded city bus after her disastrous wedding to Carl Smith, which Benjamin successfully disrupts.

Charles Webb’s own life story parallels that of his protagonist, including his West Coast roots, attendance at a prestigious East Coast college (Williams College in Massachusetts), and a postgraduate fellowship that seems eerily familiar to Benjamin’s prestigious Halpingham Award. It is because of these connections that many interpret The Graduate as an autobiographical novel thinly disguising Webb’s personal journey. Regardless if one were to call it autobiography or fiction, it is necessary to recognize the novel’s—and its subsequent film adaptations—enduring impact on American popular culture.

The Graduate was directed by Mike Nichols, who the year prior directed the acclaimed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). A stage actor, the thirty-year-old Dustin Hoffman, was cast as Benjamin Braddock after initial discussions to cast Hollywood veterans Robert Redford or Warren Beatty. Buck Henry, one of the film’s screenplay writers, appeared in a cameo as the awkward front deskman at the Taft Hotel. The Graduate, widely considered a loyal adaptation of Webb’s novel, opened in US theaters in December 1967.

Film Analysis

As with many coming-of-age narratives, The Graduate captures an individual’s struggle between familial and social expectations and one’s own undefined purpose. As Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) responds to his father (played by William Daniels) at the beginning of the film, “I’m just...[worried]...I guess about my future...I want it to be...different.” He’s not only confused about what to do with his life now that he’s graduated college. The adults around him have a lot of suggestions, including graduate school and the professional world of “Plastics!” But aside from what to do, the driving questions are how he should live his life, and why he should live a certain way. These questions consume this character and provide an important foundation for the unfolding plot of The Graduate.

There are many formal elements of Nichols’s film that help to illustrate, as well as heighten, Webb’s depictions of Benjamin’s inner turmoil and coming-of-age journey in the novel. One important choice, however, departs drastically from Webb’s literary representation of Benjamin: the casting of Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock. Webb’s Benjamin is self-possessed, confident, and attractive by conventional standards of male beauty, with blond hair more closely resembling Nichols’ original casting suggestions (Redford and Beatty). Hoffman’s portrayal of Benjamin departs from a conventional male hero, who in a typical film plot has the good looks and confidence that eventually earn him the respect of those around him, the job, and even “the girl” by the time the final credits roll. Hoffman’s consistent portrayal of nervousness, especially in his early trysts with Mrs. Robinson, are shown by his anxious verbal ticks like squeaky gasps of air, or his matter-of-fact and business-like placement of his hand on Mrs. Robinson’s breast. These details reveal the film’s investment in portraying an important combination of characteristics: Benjamin’s confusion and inexperience. Early in the film, we learn that Benjamin was a star swimmer and scholar; now, without those accolades, and in the presence of Mrs. Robinson, he’s completely a fish out of water.

Benjamin’s outsider status in his affluent hometown and family becomes evident from the opening credits, during which he stands still on a moving walkway at the airport. With the camera tracking him in profile, the white wall behind him and passersby whiz past him in the other direction, to symbolize the world passing him by. Hoffman’s blank forward stare holds a mixture of anxiety and apathy, as if staring directly into his uncertain future. The long duration of this shot (roughly a minute and a half) establishes how the film’s temporality matches the painfully slow unfolding of Benjamin’s summer with his parents.

The camerawork elsewhere in the film symbolizes further Benjamin’s status as an outsider. (On a related note, aside from a few brief glimpses of teenagers at the Taft Hotel and the drive-in, Benjamin and Elaine are surrounded by their parents’ middle-aged friends throughout the film.) Upon Benjamin’s arrival home from school, his parents host a dinner party. The sequences are tightly shot, with the Braddocks’ guests crowding Benjamin on the staircase to give their congratulations. Flanked by his parents and the Carlsons, the shot depicts Benjamin (with his forehead cut out of the frame) and incomplete glimpses of the others’ faces—including the back of Mr. Carlson’s head and a small portion of his mother’s chin. The tightness of this shot illustrates Benjamin’s claustrophobia at the dinner party, and the adults’ giddy lack of awareness of Benjamin’s anxious state. Additionally, it represents his family’s all-consuming, helicoptering behavior towards their only son, as well as Benjamin’s inability to take authority over the situation.

Nichols also uses composition of elements within the frame to comment upon Benjamin’s budding affair with Mrs. Robinson. After Benjamin drives her home from the party, Benjamin is framed in the background by Mrs. Robinson’s leg, which creates the shape of a tent over his body. Her leg in the foreground takes up most of the screen, with the shrunken-looking Benjamin proclaiming with exasperation, “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.” The spatial setup of this scene represents the all-consuming nature of Mrs. Robinson’s seductive energies towards Benjamin, as well as Benjamin’s inability to resist her. Whereas their relationship becomes more complex and dysfunctional later in the film, with the introduction of Benjamin’s interest in dating Elaine (and Mrs. Robinson’s resistance to such an idea), this early scene depicts the power dynamic between the two, in which Mrs. Robinson has complete control. Additionally, in her role as the initiator of their affair, Mrs. Robinson actively uses her body to not only manipulate the space—illustrated by her placement in front of the camera—but also to entice Benjamin into a figurative and literal all-consuming relationship.

In contrast to the two scenes above, in which Benjamin’s proximity to others illustrates a sense of being overwhelmed by the people around him, the dissolution of Benjamin’s affair with Mrs. Robinson features camerawork that shows the dysfunction and disrepair of his relationships. After Elaine learns of Benjamin’s affair with her mother, she kicks Benjamin out of her bedroom. The camera cuts to a closeup of Mrs. Robinson’s face. After she says, “Goodbye, Benjamin,” the camera deploys a fast pan out, away from Mrs. Robinson, reflecting her slouched, resigned posture in a far-away corner of the upstairs hall. In this moment, Mrs. Robinson, previously in control of the situation and completely self-possessed, appears resigned. At the end of this pan, she is a tiny body in the corner, with the back of Benjamin’s head in the foreground to illustrate the distance between them. The use of perspective and space shows their changed relationship, as well as Mrs. Robinson’s transformation from a seducer to a complex combination of villain and tragic victim. Additionally, this scene also indicates that her relationship with Elaine is presumably damaged beyond repair, even when Elaine takes her side after the false rape allegations against Benjamin. And finally, this scene’s experimentation with distance marks the dissolution of Benjamin and Elaine’s relationship, thus initiating Benjamin’s frantic, stalker-like pursuit of Elaine in Berkeley to bring her back into his life—a set of behaviors that, once again, show Benjamin as a complex character who, like Mrs. Robinson, is worthy of sympathy as well as criticism.

Significance

According to Jacob Brackman, during the film’s first six months in theaters it grossed more than $35 million—with predictions that the film would become the highest grossing film in history, surpassing The Sound of Music (1965). (The Sound of Music grossed $286 million and The Graduate earned $104.9 million.) The Graduate is currently the 22nd highest ever grossing film in the United States and Canada.

The film earned a positive critical reception and was lauded as a signature film of the 1960s. The Graduate earned a four-star review from Roger Ebert, whose only strong critique of the film related to the occasional puzzling musical choice by the soundtrack’s composers, folk rockers Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Ebert revised his original praise of the film ten years later to suggest that Benjamin Braddock is not “an admirable rebel” but instead a “self-centered creep,” and offers Mrs. Robinson as the only authentic, although ill-fated, character in the entire story worthy of the audience’s sympathies.

While both the novel and film were released during a turbulent time in American history—with the film coming out during the Vietnam War, and anti-war rumblings alluded to briefly on Katharine’s UC Berkeley campus—The Graduate focuses instead on Benjamin’s inward journey. Some critics, such as Jacob Brackman, bristled at this oversight, and also suggested that while the film represents an important theme of disillusionment for young adults in America, it is important to question the reasons why such unhappiness and indirection, and eventual revolt against authority and convention, materialized in the first place: “’The Graduate’...begins with the radical intimation that there is some choice to be made on the threshold of adulthood—some yes-or-no decision about one’s future in American society. A film artist with the intelligence and the tremendous prestige of Mike Nichols should now begin to lay bare the nature of that choice, if it still exists.” When Benjamin and Elaine stare blankly out towards the camera (and towards their viewers) at the film’s conclusion, it is unclear if the future they barrel toward together will be a happy one. The film received seven Academy Award nominations, with Nichols winning for Best Director. Bancroft earned a Golden Globe for Best Actress in her groundbreaking role.

Further Reading

Bibliography