Sightlines · reception
How The Graduate was received
1967 · Mike Nichols · The Graduate on Sightlines
The arc
A genuine phenomenon in 1967 — one of the biggest hits of its decade and the film that made Dustin Hoffman a star — it's since shifted from 'voice of a generation' to a movie each new generation re-reads: modern viewers tend to find Benjamin far less sympathetic than 1967 audiences did.
What’s debated
The evergreen debate is the famous final shot — triumph or dawning dread? — plus whether the film is a timeless satire or a boomer artifact that hasn't aged as gracefully as its reputation.
Its footprint
'Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me' and the one-word career advice 'Plastics' are permanent fixtures of the quote canon, the Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack is inseparable from it, and the seduction-framed-through-a-leg image plus the church finale have been parodied everywhere from Wayne's World 2 to The Simpsons.
Where it stands
A founding text of New Hollywood and a permanent 'you must have seen this' — less a cult object than a load-bearing wall of the American canon.
Did you know? Anne Bancroft, forever the middle-aged Mrs. Robinson, was only about six years older than Dustin Hoffman — she was 36 to his 30 during filming.
Named by the director
- A Place in the Sun (1951) — Nichols repeatedly said the George Stevens film was in his head while making The Graduate, later realizing how much of its mother/daughter romantic geometry and imagery he had absorbed.