The Graduate - 1967

Dustin Hoffman Framed Art Print
17 in. x 14 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com


This is Benjamin. He's a little worried about his future.

The Graduate (1967) is one of the key, ground-breaking films of the late 1960s, and helped to set in motion a new era of film-making. The influential film is a biting satire/comedy about a recent nebbish, East Coast college graduate who finds himself alienated and adrift in the shifting, social and sexual mores of the 1960s, and questioning the values of society (with its keyword "plastics"). The themes of the film also mirrored the changes occurring in Hollywood, as a new vanguard of younger directors were coming to the forefront. Avant-garde director Mike Nichols, following his debut success of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) with this second film, instantly became a major new talent in American film after winning an Academy Award for his directorship.

The theme of an innocent and confused youth who is exploited, mis-directed, seduced (literally and figuratively) and betrayed by a corrupt, decadent, and discredited older generation (that finds its stability in "plastics") was well understood by film audiences and captured the spirit of the times. One of the film's posters proclaimed the difficult coming-of-age for the recent, aimless college graduate:

The two different generations are also reflected in other dualities: the two rival women (young innocent doe-eyed daughter Elaine and the older seductress Mrs. Robinson), the two California settings (Los Angeles and Berkeley) and S. and N. California cultures (materialistic vs. intellectual), and the division in Benjamin's character (morally drifting and indecisive vs. committed).