Still a fine movie but it hasn't traveled well through time

Rating: 7/10 (20 March 2016)

It's been a long time since I last saw "The Graduate" but I've just watched it again.
In many ways, it is still a very fine movie with some great performances, especially from Anne Bancroft and from Dustin in what was probably his first major movie role.
BUT, in my view, there are now problems with the movie which might not have been evident at the time of its release. The Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack is still wonderful but ONLY up to a point. A movie cannot and should never have been so heavily dependent on a few great songs as this one is and, to be quite frank, by the fourth time Scarborough Fair started up, I found myself saying out loud "Oh, not again!". That is really my only criticism of The Graduate even now. It is far too dependent on the soundtrack in exactly the same way 2001 has suffered for being far too reliant on Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra that it featured way too often throughout its two and a half hours' length. That too, like the Simon and Garfunkels in The Graduate, was simply overdone and now detracts from the enjoyment of each of the movies.
Nonetheless, I still rate The Graduate quite highly and happily give it a 7. In hindsight, I think it would have been so much more enjoyable to watch now had it featured something other than the repetitive S and G soundtrack. Anyway, how did one pair of artists get the gig for an entire soundtrack?
JMV