<i>The Graduate</i> 50 Years After Its Oscar Win
Editor’s Note: This is part of The Atlantic’s ongoing series looking back at 1968. All past articles and reader correspondence are collected here. New material will be added to that page through the end of 2018.
In 1968, The Graduate was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Director. The film would go on to clinch the Best Director Oscar for Mike Nichols, launch the career of Dustin Hoffman, and stir nationwide controversy for its transgressive plot: 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock returns home from college, struggles to find direction, and is seduced by a woman who is twice his age—Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner, played to critical acclaim by Anne Bancroft. Their lust-based affair is cut short when Ben falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine, sparking an intractable conflict between the determined young man and his elders.
Discussing the now-classic motion picture 50 years after its win at the Oscars are Conor Friedersdorf, Adrienne LaFrance, Megan Garber, and Christopher Orr.
Friedersdorf: When I saw The Graduate at 20 or 21 it immediately became one of my favorite movies—I’d soon finish college; I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what I’d do next; and I could easily imagine myself like Ben in the opening scene: overwhelmed by a welcome home party; escaping to my childhood bedroom; wracked with anxiety about how to pursue a meaningful life. What did I want? Like Ben, I couldn’t have said, save that it wasn’t anything among my options, or that I could name… just a feeling. I too wanted my future to be… “different.”
All these years later, reading reviews of The Graduate for The Atlantic’s year-long retrospective on 1968, I was struck by how many critics emphasized something I was oblivious to on my first, second, and third viewings in college: the theme of 1960s generational conflict. Take Roger Ebert. Back then, he savaged the milieu of Ben’s parents as “ferociously stupid,” complaining that his family and their friends “demand that he perform in the role of Successful Young Upward-Venturing Clean-Cut All-American College Grad” and pronouncing Ben “so painfully awkward and ethical that we are forced to admit we would act pretty much as he does, even in his most extreme moments.”
Thirty years later, when Ebert returned to the film, his allegiances had changed:
Well, here *is* to you, Mrs. Robinson: You’ve survived your defeat at the hands of that insufferable creep, Benjamin, and emerged as the most sympathetic and intelligent character in The Graduate. How could I ever have thought otherwise? What murky generational politics were distorting my view the first time I saw this film? Watching the 30th anniversary revival of The Graduate is like looking at photos of yourself at an old fraternity dance. You’re gawky and your hair is plastered down with Brylcreem, and your date looks as if you found her behind the counter at the Dairy Queen. But—who’s the babe in the corner? The great-looking brunette with the wide-set eyes and the full lips and the knockout figure? Hey, it’s the chaperone!
Great movies remain themselves over the generations;
