The Graduate (1967)
Mike Nichols, director; Lawrence Turman, producer; written by Calder
Willingham and Buck Henry; starring Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katherine
Ross; soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel; rated PG.
A New Hollywood
In the late 1960s and early 70s a new generation of young filmmakers came to
prominence in American cinema. Their work was thematically complex, formally
innovative, morally ambiguous, anti-establishment, and rich in mythic
resonance. They spoke for a generation disillusioned by the Vietnam War,
disenchanted by the ruling elite, and less willing to conform than their parents.
Dubbed the ‘new Hollywood’ by the press, their films were mostly financed by the major studios, but they
introduced subject matter and styles that set them apart from studio tradition. They re-worked and re-imagined
some of Hollywood’s classic genres – such as the crime film, the war film and the western – and by so doing,
presented a more critical view of America past and present.
Together with the directors came a brilliant generation of actors and actresses, often trained in New York, who
brought to the screen a new level of gritty intensity and contemporary relevance. While the new generation’s
ambition to overturn the system and create something better in its place ultimately failed, they did succeed in
producing a body of work now considered a Golden Age in American cinema.
1967
Though the year of 1967 is now traditionally cited as a turning point in the history of American cinema, at the time
it appeared far from the case. The major studios continued to put most of their resources into the kinds of movies
that had been successful for them in the past. These included big budget musicals like Camelot (Warner Brothers)
and Dr Dolittle (20 Century Fox); James Bond (United Artists) spectaculars and their spoof offspring like Our Man
Flint and Casino Royale; and middle-of-the-road star vehicles such as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Columbia).
Many working in the industry knew that most of the mainstream Hollywood output was mediocre but few were
willing to risk their careers by opposing the wishes of the studio heads.
Yet, in spite of their innate conservatism, the studios had begun producing films whose depictions of violence, sex
and drug-taking would not have been possible just a few years before. The appointment in 1966 of Jack Valenti as
the new head of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), had resulted in an overhaul of the outmoded
Production Code allowing a new level of freedom in what could be shown on screen and some of the most
popular films of 1967, such as The Dirty Dozen and Valley of the Dolls, took advantage of this easing of censorship.
Perhaps more significantly some of the biggest hits of the year, including The Dirty Dozen, Cool Hand Luke and
Oscar-winning race drama In the Heat of the Night, were all defiantly anti-authoritarian in a way that appealed to
the younger, twenty-something audience that had been largely ignored by Hollywood in recent years.
But with hindsight, what made 1967 such a significant year in American cinema, was the production and release
of two films – Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate – which in form, tone and content, broke the mold of what had
come before, becoming in the process the progenitors of the New Hollywood revolution.
“This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about his future.”
Another unexpected box office hit released in 1967, The Graduate, also received multiple Oscar nominations
(seven in total) in the following year’s ceremony. The rights to Charles Webb’s 1963 novel had been optioned by
Lawrence Turman soon after the book came out but he’d been turned down by every major studio despite having
Mike Nichols, highly acclaimed for his work in the theatre in New York, signed on as director. Nichols had
originally planned The Graduate as his film directing debut but frustrated by the delays in financing, agreed
instead to accept an offer from Warner Brothers to direct a screen adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? The film was a huge hit, grossing $14.5 million and winning five Academy Awards with thirteen
nominations. This was enough to convince independent producer Joseph E Levine to back Nichols’ next film and at
last The Graduate had a green light.
From the start Nichols made audacious creative choices for The Graduate that went against orthodox filmmaking
practices of the time but which would ultimately prove inspired and fundamental to the film’s success. The first
was to throw out earlier drafts of the screenplay and to hire comedy writer Buck Henry, previously known for his
theatre and TV work, to write a new adaptation from scratch. When it came to casting the role of Benjamin
Braddock, the story’s central character, Nichols cast against type, choosing an unknown 29-year-old Jewish New
York-based theatre actor Dustin Hoffman, rather than the tall, blond, blue-eyed Robert Redford, who wanted to
play the part and seemed much closer to the character described in the novel. Nichols was equally innovative
during production, pushing veteran cinematographer Robert Surtees to experiment. “We did more things in that
picture than I ever did in one film,” Surtees later wrote. Finally, rather than hiring a composer to create music for
the soundtrack, the director chose instead to use already existing folk-rock songs by Simon and Garfunkel, an
unusual approach at the time, but one which would contribute greatly to the film’s popularity.
When it was released in the final weeks of 1967 The Graduate was received, at first, with dismissive, even hostile
reviews from most of the established critics of the time. They spoke for an older generation who felt personally
attacked by a movie that portrayed them as self-centred, materialistic and immoral, not to mention hypocritical.
Younger viewers took no notice of the reviews and flocked to see the movie, turning it into the highest-grossing
motion picture of 1968. The film’s success was so categorical that Warner Brothers and United Artists announced
that they were rethinking their entire development slates with a view to appealing to younger audiences. The
other studios soon followed their example.
So 1967 had indeed proved to be a watershed year in the history of American cinema. The unexpected critical and
box office success of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate showed that audiences were ready for something new.
The Second World War baby-boom generation, nurtured on rock and roll and the immediacy of television, had
now come of age and were less impressed by spectacle and pure escapism. Suspicious of authority and
disaffected by an older generation who had dragged America into yet another war, they identified with the
rebellious but comparatively innocent protagonists of these two movies. The fact that both films had been so
difficult to finance demonstrated that the studios had lost all sense of what the public wanted to see, and
chastened by their misjudgment, now began opening their doors to a younger generation of filmmakers more in
tune with the concerns of the newly evolving youth audience.