Cougar On The Prowl

Rating: 6/10 (25 April 2010)

I finally got to see The Graduate having never seen it when it came out in 1967. At the time this film purportedly spoke to the young folks of The Sixties. If in fact it, it doesn't say a whole lot for my generation.
We've got a name now for what Anne Bancroft is, we call those predatory older woman looking for young sex partners cougars. She and husband Murray Hamilton haven't been having much of a sex life for many years and she's not getting any younger.
The question is asked by more than a few reviewers why would she choose the sexually inexperienced Dustin Hoffman, son of a couple that she and Hamilton socialize with. To me the answer is that part of her component is control. She doesn't want some young lady killing stud around who might just abruptly leave because there are other fish in the sea. Bancroft wants to control and dominate the situation.
In the meantime Hoffman is having problems with his own parents, William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson. Daniels wants Hoffman to start job hunting and soon, we really don't know just how long Hoffman has been The Graduate so Daniels might just have a point. Wilson thinks it would really be nice if Dustin would find a nice girl and she's got the answer. She thinks that Dustin and Katharine Ross who is the daughter of Bancroft and Hamilton would make a proper wife.
Here's where I have a problem with the film. Bancroft is one possessive woman and she ain't sharing Hoffman with her daughter. She's right though for the wrong reasons. Things like that tawdry affair that she and Hoffman have been having have a way of slipping out and that would just get too freakish for one family. Of course Hoffman being the dunce he is and feeling full of sexual confidence says he'll have her come what may.
What may does come indeed.
I don't want to reveal any more, but I think the ending that Mike Nichols has for this film is highly unrealistic, even if you just take the characters as generational symbols.
The Graduate was a big hit back in the day and is considered a classic by many. It got Mike Nichols an Oscar for Best Director and nominations came for Dustin Hoffman for Best Actor, Anne Bancroft for Best Actress, Katharine Ross for Best Supporting Actress, Best Picture, and a few others. No one would argue that The Graduate isn't a well made film, I'm just not crazy about the message it sends.