A smart and sexy classic

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2015)

The Graduate was the 1967 instant classic that won Mike Nichols a Best Director Oscar despite In the Heat of the Night winning Best Picture that year, and made an instant movie star out of its virtually unknown star, Dustin Hoffman.
Hoffman plays Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate who has returned home with no real goals or aspirations and, as it turns out, doesn't have really time to think about such matters as he tentatively begins an affair with the much older wife of one of his parents friends, a Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who pretty much bulldozes Benjamin into having sex with her and then flips out when Benjamin develops actual feelings for Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross).
Buck Henry's clever and adult screenplay is deftly mounted by Nichols, whose directorial style is evidenced throughout...that shot of Benjamin telling Mrs. Robinson that she's trying to seduce him, from between Mrs. Robinson's legs, is sheer genius and could have come from no place but the creative mind of Mike Nichols.
As most film buffs know, the role of Mrs. Robinson was originally offered to Doris Day, who turned the role down as she felt the screenplay was, in her word, "vulgar." The character definitely would have been something different played by Day, but I think Bancroft is perfection in the role and I can't imagine anyone else playing Mrs. Robinson and her on screen chemistry with newcomer Hoffman is surprisingly smooth.
Bancroft and Hoffman receive solid support from William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson as Benjamin's parents and Murray Hamilton as Mr. Robinson. There are also brief appearances from Norman Fell, Richard Dreyfuss, Mike Farrell, and the film's writer, Buck Henry. The now iconic song score by Simon and Garfunkle, including "Mrs. Robinson" and "The Sounds of SIlence" is also a big plus and perfectly compliments the on screen proceedings. A cinema classic that should be experience by all film purists. The film was turned into a stage play decades later with Kathleen Turner playing Mrs. Robinson.