Hello darkness, my old friend….

After watching 1967’s The Graduate, I defy anyone to listen to Simon and Garfunkel sing about the darkness without immediately picturing a young-looking Dustin Hoffman (he was 30 when the film was made but he was playing 22) standing on a moving airport walkway with a blank expression on his face.

If you don’t picture that, maybe you’ll picture Dustin Hoffman floating in a pool, wearing dark glasses and barely listening to his parents asking him about graduate school.

Or maybe you’ll remember him driving his car across the Golden Gate bridge.  Or perhaps sitting at the bottom of his pool with a scuba mask on.  Or maybe you’ll see him awkwardly standing at the desk in the lobby of a fancy hotel, trying to work up the courage to get a room.  Or maybe you’ll just see him and Katharine Ross sitting at the back of that bus with a “what do we do now?” expression on their faces.

(Supposedly, that expression was not planned and was just a result of the shot running longer than expected.)

Ah, The Graduate.  Based on a novel by Charles Webb, Buck Henry’s script remains one of the quotable in history.  “Mrs. Robinson, you’re tying to seduce me …. aren’t you?”  “Plastics.”  “Elaine!”  Myself, I have an odd feeling of affection for the line “Shall I get the cops?  I’ll get the cops.”  Perhaps that’s because the line is delivered by a young and uncredited Richard Dreyfuss, appearing in his second film and adding to the film’s general atmosphere of alienation.

Alienation is the main theme of The Graduate.  As played by Hoffman, Benjamin Braddock feels alienated from everything.  He was a track star.  He was a top student in high school and college.  Now, he’s just a college graduate with no idea what he wants to do with the rest of his life.  One can argue, of course, that Braddock brings a lot of his alienation on himself.  He can be a bit judgmental, even though he’s the one who is having an adulterous affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) while also falling for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross).  His parents (William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson) can be overbearing but it’s possible they have a point.  Is he planning on spending the rest of his life floating in their swimming pool?  Benjamin says that he just needs time to finally relax.  After being pushed and pushed to be the best, he just wants time to do what he wants to do before his life becomes about plastics.  When I first saw this movie, I was totally on Benjamin’s side.  Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to understand where his parents were coming from.  Still, it’s hard not to feel that Benjamin deserves at least a little bit of time to enjoy himself.  That’s what Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) thinks, at least initially.

Mrs. Robinson is the most interesting character in the film, a force of chaos who lives to disrupt the staid world around her.  She’s bored with her marriage and her conventional but empty lifestyle so she has an affair with Benjamin.  Later, she grows bored with Benjamin and his desire to “just talk” for once and she moves on from him.  Benjamin and Elaine are both likable and you find yourself wishing the best for them but Mrs. Robinson is the character who you really remember.  Mrs. Robinson grew up without losing her sense of rebellion.  One doubts that Benjamin and Elaine are going to do the same.

A portrait of American suburbia and 60s alienation, The Graduate would prove to be one of the most influential social satires ever made.  A box office hit, it was nominated for seven Academy Awards.  It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Mike Nichols), Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Supporting Actress (Katharine Ross), Best Adapted Screenplay (Buck Henry and Calder Willingham), and Best Cinematography (Robert Surtees).  The Simon and Garfunkel songs that set the film’s mood were, for the most part, not eligible.  (Only Mrs. Robinson was written specifically for the film.)  I would argue that the film deserved to be nominated for its editing as well.  In the end, the film only won one Oscar, for Mike Nichols.  But, regardless of what awards it won or lost, The Graduate‘s legacy lives on.