Screenshot for the Week of 01 February 2021: "THE GRADUATE" (1967)

The Graduate (1967) is a masterpiece and a landmark in American cinema.  It was, the last I checked, required viewing in film classes across the U.S.  Except, possibly, the music (fine songs, but weak connection to the film; apologies to Simon & Garfunkel fans), every aspect of The Graduate—the camerawork and art direction, the symbolism, the use of light, the script and dialogue, the casting and the performances, the direction—is first rate.

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The Director of Photography on The Graduate was Robert Surtees (b. 1906, d. 1985), a true artist whose outstanding work stretches from the Golden Age to the Modern Era.  Although I consider his work on The Graduate to be his finest, …

 … Surtees is best known for Ben-Hur (1959), for which he won the third of his three Oscars.  (He received fourteen Oscar nominations in his career).

I consider The Graduate to be his pinnacle because both the indoor and outdoor camerawork are outstanding, something that can't be said of Ben-Hur.  His interiors on that film are unremarkable.  In The Graduate, his interiors—which rely more on angles and light and creative thinking—are just as artistic, just as inspired, as the exteriors.

The exterior scenes of Ben-Hur are spectacular, but the venue and epic landscape easily lend themselves to spectacular cinematography.  The exterior scenes of The Graduate didn't get that kind of geographic head start and, frankly, they didn't need it.  Surtees's true talent was demonstrated by making shots of a front-yard shrub and a backyard swimming pool, as well as an airport terminal, a young man's bedroom, a hotel lobby, a drive-in hamburger diner, a church sanctuary, and the backseat of a bus just as mesmerizing as a chariot racetrack.

His credits also include Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), King Solomon's Mines (1950) [Oscar], Quo Vadis (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) [Oscar], Mogambo (1953), Oklahoma! (1956), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), PT-109 (1963), The Collector (1965), The Hallelujah Trail (1965), Doctor Doolittle (1967), Summer of '42 (1971), The Last Picture Show (1971), The Cowboys (1972), and The Sting (1973).

Robert Surtees is the only cinematographer to have received two Oscar nominations in the same year—The Last Picture Show and Summer of '42, both for 1971.

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No American leading man has portrayed as many disparate characters as Dustin Hoffman—Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate); Ratso Rizzo (Midnight Cowboy); Jack Crabb (Little Big Man); Louis Dega (Papillon); Lenny Bruce (Lenny); Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men); Ted Kramer (Kramer vs. Kramer); Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels (Tootsie); Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman); Raymond Babbitt (Rain Man); Mumbles (Dick Tracy); Stanley Motts (Wag the Dog); Bernie Focker (Meet the Fockers)—and no two of these characters are alike.

Hoffman refused to be a part of the Hollywood scene early in his career.  He didn't attend awards shows, he didn't grant interviews, and when a reporter would shove a microphone in front of his face he usually said something surly.  I suspect the aftermath of the premiere of The Graduate weighed heavily on him.

Hoffman was a shy man.  He was new to movies, and yet he had to carry the film as the central character, appearing in every scene, the success of the film seemingly riding on his back.  And then, from the premiere of The Graduate—instantly becoming a smash hit—it quickly became a cultural touchtone for a generation of middle class youths who felt alienated by the materialistic and soulless world of their parents.  The Graduate was The Catcher in the Rye on film, and Benjamin Braddock was Holden Caulfield.  Young people related to Benjamin and found Benjamin in Hoffman.  All of a sudden, Hoffman went from a nobody to someone who couldn't go anywhere without being recognized, from someone few people called to someone whose phone rang off the hook every single day for months. It all literally overwhelmed him.

He wasn't ready to handle the attention and the instant mass recognition on the street, in restaurants, and in shops.  He wasn't ready to lose his anonymity for the rest of his life.  And at the same time he knew that he hadn't paid his dues as an actor.  He was suffocating under the onslaught of fans and feeling resentful of it and at the same time feeling unworthy of it.

Over the years he more than paid his dues.  He adjusted to his celebrity and to Hollywood's expectations, and he came to embrace all of them.

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Mike Nichols (b. 1931, d. 2014) was one of our greatest directors.  When someone famous in the film industry dies, the news always touches me and sometimes it even pains me.  But the day Mike Nichols died, a pall fell across our house.  It was identical to the pall cast over our house when Roger Ebert died the year before. (Ironically, Ebert had a completly different take on this film from mine. In his view, Mrs. Robinson is the only worthwhile character,  and Benjamin is a fool for dumping her in favor of Elaine. Ebert also disliked the ''arty" cinematography.)

From 1955 to 1958, Mike Nichols was one of the members of an improv troupe in Chicago, Compass Players.  It included Shelley Berman and Ed Asner, and it used as its performance starter a set of theatre games taught at improv classes. In 1959, Compass Players broke up and some of them formed what became a world famous comedy launching pad, Second City.  Meanwhile, Nichols had left the troupe in 1958 to go to New York with his new improv partner, Elaine May, whom he met in a chance encounter at a train station.  "Nichols and May" performed in the club circuit for only three years, from 1958 to 1961, but they earned a reputation as the hippest comedy act in the country.

Nichols holds the record for most Tony Awards for directing—six.  His Broadway credits include The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Plaza Suite, Prisoner of Second Avenue, Uncle Vanya, Streamers, The Gin Game, and Monty Python's Spamalot.

His film credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate, Catch-22 (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Silkwood (1983), Working Girl (1987), Biloxi Blues (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Birdcage (1996), and Primary Colors (1998).

At the age of 56, he married TV newswoman Diane Sawyer.  They quickly became one of the A-list couples in New York's social circuit.

Mike Nichols won an Oscar for his work on this movie, the only Oscar The Graduate earned.  His direction of it also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.  In addition, the Directors Guild of America and the New York Film Critics Circle both named him Best Director of 1967. 

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Buck Henry played the hotel clerk in the movie.  But he also co-wrote the screenplay.  When my wife and I first saw The Graduate I recognized his name from the zany prime-time TV show he and Mel Brooks wrote, one of my favorite shows as a kid, Get Smart, with Don Adams as Secret Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as 99, and Ed Platt as the Chief.  I later came to know him from his many appearances on TV shows and in other movies.

We saw The Graduate at the Sherman Theatre on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks.  Early in the movie, Bejamin's mother, played by Elizabeth Wilson, tries to convince him to attend his own party with: "The Carlsons are here.  They came all the way from Tarzana!"  We were sitting about four miles from Tarzana when she said it, and that line got one of the biggest laughs of the night.  It was helped by Wilson's delivery, as if driving to the Braddocks' Pasadena home "all the way from Tarzana" had been a major ordeal.  Pasadena is only 20 miles from Tarzana and connected by the Ventura Freeway, then with moderate 55 mph (maximum speed nationwide) traffic on weekends.  But Wilson inflected it as if the Carlsons were coming all the way from behind the Iron Curtain.

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The Graduate was the highest-grossing movie of 1967 and is available on disc from The Criterion Collection (#800).  It was named to the National Film Registry in 1996.  It ranks number 17 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 films.