1967 Academy Awards® Winners and History Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) Actor: "Bonnie And Clyde" , Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate" , Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke" , Spencer Tracy in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" Actress: "The Graduate" , Faye Dunaway in "Bonnie And Clyde" , Edith Evans in "The Whisperers", Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark" Supporting Actor: GEORGE KENNEDY in "Cool Hand Luke" , John Cassavetes in "The Dirty Dozen", Gene Hackman in "Bonnie And Clyde" , Cecil Kellaway in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Michael J.

Pollard in Supporting Actress: ESTELLE PARSONS in "Bonnie And Clyde" , Carol Channing in "Thoroughly Modern Millie", Mildred Natwick in "Barefoot in the Park", Beah Richards in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Katharine Ross in Director: MIKE NICHOLS for "The Graduate" , Richard Brooks for "In Cold Blood", Norman Jewison for "In the Heat of the Night" , Stanley Kramer for "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Arthur Penn for "Bonnie And Clyde" The Oscar ceremony in April 1968 was delayed by two days (and held on April 10) due to Martin Luther King's assassination on April 4th and subsequent funeral. This was the second time in Academy history that the ceremony was postponed (it was also delayed in 1938 and 1981). This year marked the first year that the cinematography categories were merged back together - after 28 years. No longer would there be a distinction between color and black-and-white films. This would also be true for the categories of Art Direction and Costume Design. The Oscar race was remarkably even between four of the five nominees.

The films nominated for Best Picture in 1967 reflected the changing and schizophrenic times: two films with black-racial themes (both starring Sidney Poitier) one film with a graphically-violent ending one film reflecting the changing mores between the generations and the fifth - a fanciful children's story The ultimate (surprise) compromise winner in the Best Picture category was director Norman Jewison's engrossing thriller-murder mystery and sleeper comedy/drama film, In the Heat of the Night (with seven nominations and five wins - Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound). It illustrated the racial tension, prejudice, and eventual mutual respect and camaraderie expressed between a black police detective from the North (Philadelphia) and a Southern racist, white police chief in the small Mississippi town of Sparta, where both were compelled to work together on the same homicide case. The film, with a non-white actor in a lead acting role, was so controversial that it couldn't be filmed in the Deep South, so the sets were recreated in various small towns in two states: Sparta, Freeburg, and Belleville, Illinois, and Dyersburg, Tennessee.

It was unusual for the Academy to honor an old-fashioned, murder 'who-dun-it' as Best Picture. [Only a few traditional murder mysteries where the 'killer' is unveiled in the final moments have ever been nominated as Best Picture - The Thin Man (1934) and The Maltese Falcon (1941) . In the Heat of the Night was the first detective mystery to win the Best Picture Oscar, and the first Best Picture in Academy history to feature a police officer as its central character.] Another Best Picture nominee that was considered controversial because of its racial theme (it was Hollywood's first mainstream film about inter-racial marriage!) was liberal director Stanley Kramer's socially-relevant problem-comedy of racial co-existence, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (with ten nominations and only two wins - Best Actress and William Rose's Best Story/Screenplay). It was about a liberal couple (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) who are values-challenged when their sole young daughter (Katharine Houghton) brings home her prospective marriage partner - a world-renowned black surgeon (a typecast role for Sidney Poitier, the biggest box-office star at the time).

The two other choices for Best Picture in 1967 reflected the schizophrenic nature of the nominees - these two were ground-breaking and influential films that had a tremendous impact on young audiences, and signaled a significant shift that was soon to occur - the dawning of auteurism and the "New Hollywood": Arthur Penn (with his second nomination) directed the popular "New Hollywood" film Bonnie and Clyde (with ten nominations and only two wins - Best Supporting Actress and Best Cinematography) - the gangster fairy-tale was based on two Depression-era bank robbers who roamed the Southwest and ended with a bloody finale that was unprecedented in a mainstream Hollywood film. The film's chances for winning Best Picture were dimmed after New York Times critic Bosley Crowther's scathing campaign against the picture Mike Nichols (following his previous year's success in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) ) directed a screen adaptation of Charles Webb's novel, The Graduate (with seven nominations and only one win - for Nichols' direction) - a funny, definitive 60s film which spoke to alienated youth in the counter-cultural generation.

[Note: it was the last film to ever take home Best Director and no other Oscar.] The critical and box-office failure, 20th Century Fox's and director Richard Fleischer's trifling Best Picture-nominated Doctor Doolittle (with nine nominations and two wins - Best Song "Talk to the Animals" and Best Special Visual Effects) with Rex Harrison in the un-nominated title role as the English, 19th century animal-loving veterinarian, was not considered a serious contender, although it was a big-budget effort. Of the five directors in the Best Picture nominees, only director Richard Fleischer of Doctor Doolittle was not nominated. Richard Brooks took Fleischer's place in the Best Director nominees for his directorship of Truman Capote's docu-drama "non-fiction novel" of a mass murder of a family in 1959 in Kansas, In Cold Blood (with four nominations and no wins). Mike Nichols' win for Best Director of The Graduate (the film's sole Oscar) was considered a consolation prize for his loss the previous year. Both Bonnie and Clyde and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner had at least one nominee in each of the four acting award categories.

The winner in the hotly-contested Best Actor category was Rod Steiger (with his third and last career nomination and his first Oscar win) as gum-chewing, bigoted, Southern small-town local sheriff Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night . By chance, he has to work on a local homicide case with the aid of Northern black detective Sidney Poitier's know-how. The other four nominees for Best Actor were: Spencer Tracy (in his ninth and last collaboration with co-nominee actress Katharine Hepburn) for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as Matt Drayton - the socially-prominent San Franciscan father of a 21 year-old daughter (Hepburn's real-life niece Katharine Houghton in her film debut) who brings home her black fiance - a surgeon (Sidney Poitier) with hopes of approval for their marriage. [The nomination, received posthumously, was Tracy's ninth and last Oscar nomination for his last film. He had won his two career Oscars back in the late 1930s.

Tracy died less than two weeks after filming ended.] Warren Beatty (with his first of four unsuccessful acting nominations) for his career-launching role as impotent drifter and Depression Era bank-robber Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde 29 year-old Dustin Hoffman (with his first of seven career nominations), like Warren Beatty, for his star-making role in The Graduate as young, shy, and aimless 21 year-old Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate with no ambition or sense of adult responsibility who is told that "plastics" is the future Paul Newman (with his fourth nomination) for his role as the title character, a rebellious chain-gang convict in director Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke Katharine Hepburn hadn't won an Oscar since 1933 - 34 years earlier, although she had been in many fine roles since then. She finally won her second Oscar (and it wouldn't be her last) as liberal-thinking Christina Drayton whose daughter is considering inter-racial marriage with a distinguished black surgeon (Sidney Poitier) in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

It was Hepburn's tenth career nomination, tying her with Bette Davis (also with two Oscars) as the most-nominated actress. Hepburn would go on to surpass Davis with two more Oscars and a total of twelve career nominations. The performances of the other Best Actress nominees were probably more deserving, including: Anne Bancroft (with her third of five career nominations) as the cunning, tempting, menacingly-seductive Mrs. Robinson in Bonnie and Clyde Britain's Dame Edith Evans (with her third and last unsuccessful career nomination) as Mrs. Ross - an elderly, senile old woman living in poverty in director Bryan Forbes' melodramatic The Whisperers (the film's sole nomination) Audrey Hepburn (with her fifth and last career nomination) as Susy Hendrix - a blind, terrorized woman in director Terence Young's thriller Wait Until Dark (the film's sole nomination) The winner in the Best Supporting Actor category was George Kennedy (with his sole career nomination - and only Oscar) as battling and then admiring convict boss 'Dragline' who struggles against Paul Newman for leadership and eventually becomes his second-in-command friend and co-escapee in Cool Hand Luke .

Co-stars Gene Hackman (with his first nomination) and Michael Pollard (with his sole career nomination) were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor for their roles in Bonnie and Clyde as Buck Barrow (Clyde's brother) and as baby-faced car mechanic and gang member C.W. Moss. The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were: Cecil Kellaway (with his second and last of two unsuccessful career nominations) for his role as Drayton-family friend and priest Monsignor Ryan in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner John Cassavetes, better known for his improvisational directorial efforts (Shadows (1960)) (with his sole career nomination) as Victor Franko, one of the dozen hardened criminals on a suicide mission in the war-action film The Dirty Dozen (with four nominations and one win - Best Sound Effects), directed by Robert Aldrich The Best Supporting Actress award was captured by Estelle Parsons (with her first nomination and sole Oscar win) in her second film as neurotic, hysterical and annoying Blanche Barrow (outlaw Clyde's sister-in-law) in Bonnie And Clyde .

The other Best Supporting Actress nominees included: Katharine Ross (with her sole career nomination) as Elaine Robinson (Dustin Hoffman's girlfriend and Anne Bancroft's daughter) in The Graduate Beah Richards (with her sole nomination) as Mrs. Prentice (Sidney Poitier's mother) in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Mildred Natwick (with her sole nomination) recreating her Broadway role as Mrs. Ethel Banks (Jane Fonda's stodgy mother) in the film version of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (the film's sole nomination) Carol Channing (with her sole career nomination) as social Long Island widow Muzzy Van Hossmere in George Roy Hill's Thoroughly Modern Millie (with seven nominations and one win - Best Original Music Score) Producer/director Alfred Hitchcock was presented with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, possibly in recognition of the fact that he had been nominated five times for Best Director and had lost every time: for Psycho (1960) . This was Hitchcock's first and only 'Oscar'.

Oscar Snubs and Omissions: Sidney Poitier starred in three films in 1967, but didn't receive nominations for any of them (both of his co-stars Hepburn and Steiger won Oscars, however): for his outstanding performance as Virgil Tibbs in the Best Picture-winning In the Heat of the Night - as a well-dressed, honest, affluent-looking, proud black homicide detective from Philadelphia ("They call me Mr. Tibbs!") with forensic skills, investigating a case in 60s Mississippi for his role as teacher Mark Thackeray in the tough, inner-city section of London's East End tenements in To Sir, With Love for his appearance as African-American doctor/fiancee John Prentice in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner It was definitely unusual that Best Picture competitor The Graduate won only the Best Director Oscar and nothing else - it should have at the least won Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Buck Henry and Calder Willingham - and the Best Picture honor. Theadora Van Runkle's Costume Design nomination for Bonnie and Clyde was defeated by John Truscott for his costuming of the period piece Camelot.

Five films and their superb performances were unanimously ignored by the Academy in 1967: John Boorman's stylistic thriller Point Blank (with no nominations) with Lee Marvin as vengeful Walker Stanley Donen's Two for the Road (with only one unsuccessful nomination for Best Story and Screenplay) with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney as couple Joanna and Mark Wallace in a disintegrating marriage director/writer Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (with no nominations), with Welles as Shakespeare's comic character Falstaff director Martin Ritt's Hombre (with no nominations) about racial bigotry (and a variation of John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) ), with Paul Newman as half-breed Apache warrior John Russell and Richard Boone as villain Cicero Grimes (with two notable lines: "Mister, you've got alot of hard bark on you walkin' down here like this," and “Well now, what'ya suppose hell's gonna look like?") director Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967, Fr.), (with no nominations) starring Catherine Deneuve (un-nominated) as a sexually-unfulfilled bourgeois Parisian housewife Severine Serizy with psychosexual

 (sado-machochistic) fantasies realized when she became a daytime prostitute Writer/director Richard Brooks' black and white crime drama In Cold Blood, with a script by Truman Capote and a powerful un-nominated performance by Robert Blake as a murderer, received four nominations (Best Cinematography for Conrad Hall, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Score - and no Best Picture nomination) without any success.

Richard Harris was un-nominated as King Arthur in Camelot, as was Richard Burton (as Petruchio) opposite Elizabeth Taylor (as Katherine) in director Franco Zeffirelli's romantic comedy The Taming of the Shrew (with only two nominations: Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design). Best Song nominees included: "The Bare Necessities" from Disney's Jungle Book, "The Eyes of Love" from Banning, "The Look of Love" from Casino Royale, "Thoroughly Modern Millie" from Thoroughly Modern Millie, and the ultimate winner: "Talk to the Animals" from Doctor Doolittle. Two very popular songs were neglected in the selections: "To Sir With Love" from To Sir, With Love, and Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" from The Graduate Film Critique Essay - 588 Words The Graduate Essay ...﻿Kirsten Thouvenot 323648 kdtf4d@mail.missouri.edu Film Studies 1800 Lesson 2 Mise-en-Scène The Graduate, a film released in 1967, involves a young man going through the crisis of finding himself after graduating college.

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933 Words | 3 Pages The Graduate (1967) | The Film Spectrum The Graduate (1967) Producer: Lawrence Turman (United Artists) Writers: Charles Webb (novel), Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (screenplay) Photography: Robert Sourtees Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katherine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton Introduction “I’ve had this feeling ever since I’ve graduated, this kind of compulsion that I have to be rude all the time, you know what I mean? It’s like I’ve been playing some kind of game but the rules don’t make any sense to me. They’re being made up by all the wrong people.” The power of The Graduate can be summed up in two images. The first is Benjamin lying in the pool, post-graduation, trying to decide what to do in life. We’ve all been there, that coming-of-age feeling of a “quarter-life crisis,” uncertain about our future. The second is the famous shot under Mrs. Robinson’s leg.

In one shot, The Graduate opened Hollywood’s bedroom door, planting the seeds for phrases like “MILF” and “cougar” and paving the way for so many sex comedies to come, from American Pie to Desperate Housewives. If you think such material shocks audiences today, imagine the impact in 1967. Together, this combo of coming-of-age politics and groundbreaking sexual revolution changed the course of movie — and American — history. The Graduate taught studio heads that great success could be had by making hipper films targeting younger audiences, marking a demarcation point from the “sword and sandal” epics of the ’50s and early ’60s. Director Mike Nichols played upon the generation gap, flattering youth by depicting adults as materialistic hypocrites, while leading Hollywood down a more socially-relevant path. If you’ve never seen the movie, prepare yourself for some seemingly random scuba diving, extended montage lounging and an uncertain ending interpreted in two different ways by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer (2009). While these elements can be challenging, I assure you they are not random.

They are the keys to understanding one of the best displays of directing in movie history and will bring you a new appreciation for one of the most important movies ever made. Plot Summary No love triangle has ever been as awkward for characters or as intriguing for viewers as the one in The Graduate. Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is a young college graduate overwhelmed by the thought of his future; the wife of his father’s business partner, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), is an alcoholic, middle-aged temptress who seduces Benjamin into having an affair; and her sweet daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross), genuinely falls for Benjamin, unaware that he’s having an affair with her mother. When Benjamin tries to call off the affair to date Elaine, Mrs. Robinson fights back, sending Elaine off to college at UC Berkeley. Believing Elaine might be his one true love, Benjamin hits the road to make amends. Can he catch her in time before she marries another man? Screenplay The script was based on a 1963 novel by Charles Webb, who truly put his money where his mouth was.

Webb applied the book’s anti-materialistic values to his own life, selling all the money he made from the movie, even his wedding presents, to work minimum wage jobs. While a horrible business decision, Webb believed what he was writing, and that authenticity bleeds from the story. When it came time to adapt the book for the silver screen, the job went to screenwriters Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Willingham knew good filmmaking, having written Paths of Glory (1957) for Stanley Kubrick and One-Eyed Jacks (1961) for Marlon Brando, and went on to write for Hoffman again in Little Big Man (1970). Meanwhile, Henry made a memorable cameo as the hotel desk clerk, before becoming one of the most coveted screenwriters of the ’70s, reuniting with Nichols for Catch-22 (1970), winning the WGA Award for Best Original Comedy in Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972) and earning a second Oscar nomination for Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait (1978). Still, none of those scripts matched their Oscar-nominated script for The Graduate.

While it lost Best Adapted Screenplay to In the Heat of the Night (1967), Willingham and Henry got the last laugh, as their script ranked No. 13 in the WGA’s Top 101 Screenplays of All Time , ahead of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Apartment (1960) and Pulp Fiction (1994). The script landed two quotes on the AFI’s Top 100 Movie Quotes . Ranking No. 63 was“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?” Ranking No. 43 is arguably the best one liner in the history of movies: “Plastics.” The line makes a mockery of adults, painting them as plastic phonies obsessed with material things. The reason it’s such a great quote is not so much the line itself, but the awkward confusion it elicits from Benjamin: “Exactly how do you mean?” Dustin Hoffman: A Star is Born The role of Benjamin Braddock introduced a new kind of leading man. Gone were the hardboiled Bogarts, suave Cary Grants and slick James Deans. Here was a nebbish Dustin Hoffman, young, awkward and unsure.

Director Mike Nichols plucked Hoffman from car commercials to replace the original choice Robert Redford, launching one of Hollywood’s most storied careers. His awkward nervousness is priceless throughout the film. Watch as Mr. Robinson comes home, startling Benjamin, who stutters something to the effect of, “She told me to bring her home. So I, I brought her home.” Note also his fumbling during the masterful hotel bar sequence. The role earned Hoffman an Oscar nomination, losing to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night (1967), an odd choice considering Sidney Poitier was the true lead as Mr. Tibbs. Even so, the smash success of The Graduate made Hoffman a hot commodity, earning two more nominations for Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Lenny (1974) before winning the Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). The rest is history, including a nomination for Tootsie (1982) and a second win for Rain Man (1988). Still, Hoffman remembers where he came from. During Nichols’ AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, Hoffman had the highest of praises for his very first director: “It made a great career.

And so I thank you for casting this short, 29-year-old, unknown actor with a prominent nose to play Benjamin Braddock.” He also thanked Nichols for turning his apparent acting failures into improvised gold. At one point, Hoffman thought he ruined a scene, went to the back of the room and literally beat his head against the wall. Nichols kept the moment in the film, teaching Hoffman a valuable acting lesson: sometimes the unplanned is the best. Here’s to You, Mrs. Bancroft Unlike Hoffman, Bancroft’s career was rocking even before The Graduate, having won the Best Actress Oscar as Helen Keller’s teacher in The Miracle Worker (1962) and Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for The Pumpkin Eater (1964). While The Miracle Worker brought the only Oscar of her career, she will be forever remembered as the iconic Mrs. Robinson. Though Benjamin is the centerpiece, Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson may be the most fascinating character study, equal parts sexy and depressed. Bored with her husband (Murray Hamilton) and her life as an aging housewife, she desperately wants to return to her carefree youth, while holding a motherly role that won’t allow it.

Her strict opposition to Benjamin dating Elaine is partially because Elaine is her daughter, but mostly because Elaine represents all that she lost when she entered polite adult society: her youth, her freedom, her art degree, all of which she laments as the two lay side-by-side in the hotel bed. And yet, somehow Bancroft manages to mine comedy out of this depressed alcoholic figure. Such comedic timing is fitting for the wife of Mel Brooks, whom she married in 1961 and remained with until her death in 2005. I roar with laughter each time I see Bancroft’s straight face to Hoffman’s boob grab, or her delayed exhale after he kisses her with smoke still in her mouth. The role of Mrs. Robinson won Bancroft the Golden Globe and a third Oscar nomination, losing to Katharine Hepburn for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). After The Graduate, she was offered the mother role in The Exorcist (1973), but had to turn it down when she became pregnant.

She then earned her fourth Oscar nomination throwing a drink in the face of Shirley MacLaine in Turning Point (1977), played alongside John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) and earned her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Agnes of God (1985). Supporting Cast Playing the third side of the love triangle is the lovely and talented Katharine Ross. Across various film eras, my eyes have seen few that can compete with her youthful beauty. Ross’ turn as Elaine Robinson won her a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer (along with Hoffman in the male category) and earned her the only Oscar nomination of her career, losing to Estelle Parsons in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She was once again etched into film history as Etta Place in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969), but she never again saw the success she did in the ’60s. Still, her career saw a few memorable efforts, including The Stepford Wives (1975), a Golden Globe win for Voyage of the Damned (1976) and Donnie Darko (2001). Mr.

Robinson played by Murray Hamilton, eight years before his greedy Amity mayor in Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). Every time I see the Kinder boy’s yellow raft ripped to shreds by the shark, I think of Mr. Robinson wanting to rip Benjamin to shreds on his own pool raft. Hamilton’s best scene comes in the dark when he confronts Benjamin about the affair. Benjamin’s parents are superbly played by William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson. Daniels won two Primetime Emmys for St. Elsewhere (1982) before playing Mr. Feeny in Boy Meets World (1993). Wilson worked with Nichols again in The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and Regarding Henry (1991). Mike Nichols: Master Director You’d think that it would be enough for Mike Nichols to have created the most famous shot in movie history, affectionately known as The Graduate Shot, using Mrs. Robinson’s bent knee as a triangular framing device. Instead, Nichols turns in one of the greatest directing performances in movie history, and one of the best in helping young filmmakers understand the role of a director.

Nichols won the Oscar for Best Director, beating out Arthur Penn for Bonnie and Clyde, Norman Jewison for In the Heat of the Night, Stanley Kramer for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Richard Brooks for In Cold Blood and (unnominated) Stuart Rosenberg for Cool Hand Luke. It was the only Oscar of a career that earned an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award . The Graduate is a master directing piece right from the opening credits, where Benjamin rides to the left on an airport conveyor belt as everyone else follows the airport P.A. request, “Please stay to the right.” The political implications are obvious, following Henry’s own driving theme, “How do I get away from my mother and father and their Republican friends?” (A). Regardless of your own political stripes, you must respect the artist’s efforts to express his own views. Black and White Stripes After the symbolic opening, Nichols introduces us to the pattern of black-and-white stripes. They first appear as the vertically-striped wallpaper in Benjamin’s room, resembling jailbars of his parents’ black and white existence. Next, we see that the Robinsons have a black and white striped awning. Then, we see that Benjamin’s own parents have a black and white striped awning, too.

This is all in contrast to Benjamin’s colorful, diagonally-striped tie. Long Takes From here, Nichols shows us his mastery of long takes. The first comes with Benjamin’s head sitting against a fish tank (more on this in a bit). He stares expressionless at the camera, dreading going downstairs to his graduation party, as his father enters the frame and sits next to him, invading his space. Just then, Benjamin’s mom enters and completely blocks the frame, covering the entire screen. The blocked frame becomes so uncomfortable that the camera has to escape, pulling back with Benjamin and his parents as they exit the bedroom and enter the hallway. As the three make their way down the stairs to meet their guests, the camera settles on a portrait of a sad clown in the hallway. Nichols cuts directly to Hoffman’s fake smile, mirroring the face of the clown in the previous shot. I can’t help but think of “Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, which went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1970. Nichols cuts from this long take to another one downstairs, as Benjamin is swarmed by family friends.

Note how they all intrude upon the frame and invade his space. During the sequence, Nichols allows the camera to pause just long enough to catch Mrs. Robinson smoking in the background, eying Benjamin up, foreshadowing her cougar lust for him. Later, after Mrs. Robinson pitches the affair, Nichols uses another long take to express Benjamin’s guilt as Mr. Robinson comes home. Nichols starts with a shot glass large in the foreground with the rest out of focus, until Benjamin runs downstairs and grabs it. The camera pulls back as Mr. Robinson enters. Mrs. Robinson comes downstairs to join them with Ben symbolically between the Robinsons. As Mr. Robinson puts his arm around Ben and says, “You have yourself a few flings this summer. I bet you’re quite a lady’s man,” the camera moves over to catch Mrs. Robinson’s face. ‘Key’ to the Film: The Scuba Gear The directing concept that puzzles most first-time viewers may actually be the most important: Benjamin’s parents forcing him to wear scuba gear for his birthday.

Not only does it allow for inventive, half-submerged shots (influencing Jaws), it allows for the symbolism of his parents shoving him underwater. The scene might appear random at first glance, but if you pay close enough attention, you’ll unlock its secret. Let’s go back to Benjamin’s bedroom at the start of the film, as he sits expressionless by his fish tank. Note the scuba diver aiming his gun at Benjamin’s head. Moments later, Mrs. Robinson enters the room and asks Ben to drive her home. As she tosses him her keys, they land directly on the scuba diver. The symbolism is simple: the scuba diver is the key to the movie. With this in mind, the scuba diving scene makes perfect sense. As the underwater camera pulls away, Benjamin becomes small in the background, quite literally becoming the size of the scuba diver figurine in his fish tank. If you’ve ever tried to move around in water, you get the analogy. The weight of the real world is on him, and the “water pressure” is enough to drown him. Bridge Over Troubled Water This “troubled water” theme persists throughout the film.

After the poolside “plastics” comment, Benjamin goes back upstairs and stares down at the pool from his window. Later, he has to run through the rain when he admits the truth to Elaine. How fitting for a future “Rain Man,” where Barry Levinson uses an empty pool to symbolic effect. Water returns as Benjamin sits on the fountain at UC Berkeley with an American flag in the foreground. Later, Ben drives across the Golden Gate Bridge, recalling Simon & Garfunkel’s song “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” At this point, Ben’s future is still uncertain, so the water appears in the shot. The angle of the bridge drastically shifts once Ben finally decides to stop Elaine’s wedding. Chasing after his love with a clear mission, we get a dead-on shot looking forward, seeing only the bridge and no more troubled water. It’s a powerful moment, his red car speeding out of the darkness of a tunnel and into the light, cuing the chorus of “Mrs. Robinson.” Precision Transitions The best example of Benjamin escaping this “troubled water” also displays Nichols’ genius use of transitions.

Few films have better displayed the director-editor relationship, as Benjamin jumps out of the water onto a pool raft, only to cut to him landing on top of Mrs. Robinson in a hotel bed. It may be the most genius cut I’ve ever seen, meshing a daring directing style with the symbolic theme of sexual freedom. As he lays on top of Mrs. Robinson, he hears his dad’s voice. Confused, Benjamin turns and looks at the camera, as we cut to a shot of his dad looking down on him in the pool. The raft-to-bed edit is the culmination of an entire montage full of clever transitions, transporting Benjamin from his home to the hotel room, using black backgrounds behind his head (black pillows, headboards, etc.) to mask the transition. Such transitions were mimicked by the Coen Brothers with a television trick in Fargo (1996) and M. Night Shyamalan using floral patterns behind Bruce Willis to cut between wallpaper and his pillow. Another telling transition links Mrs. Robinson to her daughter Elaine. It starts with Mrs.

Robinson watching TV’s The Newlywed Game, where the host asks a contestant a hilariously ironic question: “What is your wife’s most unusual habit?” The shot of Mrs. Robinson’s face dissolves into her younger self, Elaine, riding in Benjamin’s car to the sound of a roaring engine. Reflections Nichols also makes genius use of various reflections. My favorite is Mrs. Robinson’s reflection in the restaurant table when she first arrives for their hotel rendezvous. More symbolic is Mrs. Robinson’s reflection in the glass of Elaine’s portrait. As Benjamin whips his head around, Nichols fires a barrage of nude flashes of Mrs. Robinson, not quite as subliminal as Fight Club (1999). Symbolic Racks and Zooms The next time we enter Elaine’s bedroom, Benjamin desperately tries to admit his affair with her mother. Nichols shows an innocent Elaine in the foreground as an out-of-focus Mrs. Robinson appears through the cracked door in the background. The camera “rack focuses” to Mrs. Robinson’s defeated face, then racks back to Elaine as she herself realizes the truth. This leads to one of the film’s most brilliant shots.

After Elaine screams and kicks Benjamin out of her room, Nichols shows a medium close-up of Mrs. Robinson, expressionless and make-up running down her face. As she says, “Goodbye Benjamin,” Nichols zooms out to leave Mrs. Robinson a small, ashamed figure deep in the frame. It’s one of the greatest uses of symbolic depth of field since Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941). ‘Jesus Loves You More Than You Will Know’ The comparisons between Mrs. Robinson and Elaine culminate at the church as Mrs. Robinson says, “It’s too late!” to which Elaine yells, “Not for me!” Mrs. Robinson slaps her not because she’s being rebellious, but because deep down she knows Elaine is right. Few things are as symbolic as two young lovers locking their strict religious parents into a church using a giant wooden crucifix. Atheists will cheer the moment as a call for John Lennon’s, “No religion, too,” while it will likely piss off strident Evangelicals. More progressive Christians may view it as a shift from a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible in favor of Christ’s message of love.

Is the crucifix Ben’s final statement against the establishment, or a protective sword for true righteousness singing “Jesus loves you more than you will know?” As Ben and Elaine escape the church, they hop onto a bus, trading smiles and worried faces, unsure about what to do next. As the bus rides off into the distance to “The Sound of Silence,” we wonder whether the young lovers have made a huge mistake and whether their liberation attempt will fall on deaf ears, “like silent raindrops fell, echoed in the wells of silence.” Wall-to-Wall Soundtrack Every soundtrack today owes credit to The Graduate, the first time a band provided a wall-to-wall soundtrack for a movie. Simon & Garfunkel’s success launched a decade of killer soundtracks, from Cat Stevens’ Harold & Maude (1971) to the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever (1977). You can still hear their influence each time an Elliot Smith sings on a film like Good Will Hunting (1997). “Mrs. Robinson” topped the Billboard charts and earned Simon & Garfunkel a Grammy for Record of the Year.

The song appears in various forms throughout the film, including a vocal rendition, a whistling tune and a hard-strumming guitar. The AFI ranked it the No. 6 Greatest Movie Song of All Time , ahead of classics like “When You Wish Upon a Star,” and behind only “Over the Rainbow,” “As Time Goes By,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Moon River” and “White Christmas.” The soundtrack also includes the duo’s 1966 hit “The Sound of Silence,” used during the opening credits, during an Act Two sex montage and during the end credits. As Simon & Garfunkel sing, “Hear my words that I might teach you / Take my arms that I might reach you,” Nichols offers his social message to his audience. Rounding out the soundtrack is “Scarborough Fair.” The movie repeatedly asks if we’re going there, while ingraining its album title in our heads: “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.” Pop Culture The film was a smash hit at the box office, grossing the equivalent of $967 million today.

Adjusted for inflation, that makes it the 21st highest grossing movie of all time, a bigger box office smash than The Godfather (1972), Forrest Gump (1994), The Avengers (2012) and The Dark Knight (2008). It went on to become one of the most referenced movies of all time in our pop culture lexicon, starting with a famous ad by the Peace Corps, re-enacting the opening graduation party. In 1992, the Lemondheads scored an alternative rock hit with their cover of “Mrs. Robinson.” That same year in Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), Buck Henry pitches a sequel set 25 years later where Ben and Elaine are married and Mrs. Robinson has had a stroke. Pulp Fiction (1994), recreates the popping toaster from The Graduate‘s scene where Ben tells his parents about his wedding plans. In Nichols own film The Birdcage (1996), Albert returns to the apartment only to get his toothbrush, saying it’s all he’ll need where he is going.

It’s a clear reference to The Graduate, where Ben’s only piece of luggage is a toothbrush when he stays at the hotel with Mrs. Robinson. The Graduate also provided a blueprint for Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998) in how to make a coming-of-age story about a young man and an older women, all set to a rock soundtrack. The scuba scene also inspired a running underwater gag in Anderson’s films. Perhaps most memorably, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” plays in the background to Stifler’s Mom in American Pie (1999). Stifler himself appears in a scene in Old School (2003), where a drowsy Will Ferrell falls into a swimming pool, cuing “The Sounds of Silence.” The vertical stripe technique is repeated by Jay Roach in Meet the Parents (2000), as Ben Stiller feels trapped by Robert DeNiro’s CIA tactics. Rob Reiner’s Rumor Has It… (2005) starred Jennifer Aniston as a woman who learns her family was the inspiration for “The Graduate,” and that she might be the offspring of the affair.

In Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek bangs on the glass and screams “Fiona” much like Benjamin yelling “Elaine” while banging the glass in The Graduate wedding scene. The Graduate is referenced heavily in (500) Days of Summer (2009), where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel disagree over the film’s ending. He thinks it’s a happy ending, while she cries. Legacy As evidenced by all of the pop culture references, The Graduate remains one of the great examples of a popular film done artfully. Thankfully, it’s getting the acclaim it deserves. The film ranked No. 36 on TV Guide’s Top 50 , No. 55 on Entertainment Weekly’s Top 100 and No. 50 on Rolling Stone‘s 100 Maverick Movies . It also made Vanity Fair‘s Top 50, AMC Filmsite’s Top 100 and the IMDB Top 250 . Unfortunately, the film fell from No. 7 on the AFI’s original Top 100 list down to No. 17 in its 10th Anniversary list, bringing On the Waterfront down with it from No.

8 to No. 18. If it somehow climbs back into the Top 10 in the future, it would be fine by me. Critics can name me a list of art masterpieces, while mainstreamers can name me a list of popular favorites. But both will be hard pressed to name a film this artistic that caught on so wildly with the mainstream imagination. Beyond the best lists and pop culture references, The Graduate‘s true legacy is how it changed the world. The film remains a snapshot of a generation’s feelings during a tumultuous period, the ripple effect of which continues to be felt. In a way, the entire nation graduated with Benjamin and Elaine, and continues to search its way, asking “where have you gone Joe DiMaggio” like a bunch of Mrs. Robinsons, our collective faces morphing from joyous smiles to uncertain fears like two young kids on a newlywed bus headed for the horizon.

Citations: Mike Nichols: Six of the late director's memorable movies - LA Times Mike Nichols: Six of the late director's memorable movies Mike Nichols Mike Nichols and Tom Hanks on the set of "Charlie Wilson's War." Mike Nichols and Tom Hanks on the set of "Charlie Wilson's War." (Francois Duhamel / Universal) Oliver Gettell Contact Reporter 'The Graduate,' 'The Birdcage' and more: Six memorable films from the late Mike Nichols Mike Nichols, the pioneering director and comedian who died Wednesday night at the age of 83, leaves behind an acclaimed, varied and prolific body of work. After breaking out as half of a satirical comedy duo with Elaine May in the late 1950s, Nichols found his niche as a director and proved equally adept at theater, television and film. Along the way he became one of the handful of EGOTs — those who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards — an especially rare feat for a director. Although his filmmaking output was not without the occasional misstep, Nichols crafted his share of groundbreaking movies and was a consummate actors' director -- he directed at least a dozen actors to Oscar nominations. Following are six of his most memorable films.

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) Nichols made his feature directing debut with an adaptation of Edward Albee's critically acclaimed but controversially profane play about an academic couple's tempestuous relationship. But the casting of the headline-grabbing twosome of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton proved to be an inspired choice, and the film racked up 13 Academy Award nominations, winning five, including best actress for Taylor, with the heavily dramatic spin on Albee's piece. "The Graduate" (1967) Nichols cemented his status as a top director and launched the career of Dustin Hoffman with "The Graduate," based on the Charles Webb novel about an aimless college graduate (Hoffman) who has an affair with the neglected wife (Anne Bancroft) of his father's law partner and then falls for her daughter (Katharine Ross). Heralding the beginning of the New Hollywood era, the film was a critical and commercial success that earned seven Academy Award nominations and won Nichols an Oscar for best director, not to mention becoming one of the best-known movies of its era.

Read more stories "Silkwood" (1983) After a series of misfires including "Catch-22," "Day of the Dolphin" and "The Fortune," Nichols rebounded with this fact-based drama about a whistle-blower at a nuclear power plant. The film teamed Nichols with Meryl Streep for the first time, but not the last. They would go on to work together on "Heartburn," "Postcards From the Edge" and HBO's "Angels in America," and had been developing "Master Class," an HBO piece about the opera singer Maria Callas, at the time of Nichols' death. Photos "Working Girl" (1988) One of Nichols' warmer, wackier films, this workplace romantic comedy featured Melanie Griffith in a career role as a moxie-filled Wall Street secretary who poses as her domineering boss (Sigourney Weaver). Nichols coaxed first-rate comedic turns from Griffith, Weaver and Joan Cusack, all of whom received Oscar nominations (Griffith for lead actress, Weaver and Cusack for supporting actress). The film was also a box-office hit, grossing more than $100 million worldwide.

"The Birdcage" (1996) An update of the French farce "La Cage aux Folles," "The Birdcage" would become Nichols' highest-grossing film, taking in $124 million domestically and another $61 million overseas. Nichols expertly corralled a star-studded cast — Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane, Dianne Wiest — in the boisterous tale of a gay couple pretending to be straight so their son can introduce them to his fiancee's conservative parents. "Charlie Wilson's War" (2007) Nichols' final film starred Tom Hanks as the titular congressman, a high-living wheeler-dealer who teamed up with a wealthy socialite (Julia Roberts) and a gruff CIA operative (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to aid Afghan mujahedin against the Soviet Union. If the film didn't reach the heights of Nichols' earlier successes, it did earn generally favorable reviews and was a notably entry in the director's latter-career phase.

Follow @ogettell for movie news The Graduate (1967) - The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection Spine #800 One of the most beloved American films of all time, The Graduate earned Mike Nichols a best director Oscar, brought the music of Simon & Garfunkel to a wider audience, and introduced the world to a young actor named Dustin Hoffman. Benjamin Braddock (Hoffman) has just finished college and is already lost in a sea of confusion and barely contained angst when he becomes sexually involved with a friend of his parents’, the indomitable Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), before turning his attention to her college-age daughter (Katharine Ross). Visually imaginative and impeccably acted, with a clever, endlessly quotable script by Buck Henry (based on the novel by Charles Webb), The Graduate had the kind of cultural impact that comes along only once in a generation.

Cast Disc Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Optional 5.1 surround remix, approved by director Mike Nichols, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray Audio commentary from 2007 featuring Nichols in conversation with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh Audio commentary from 1987 featuring film scholar Howard Suber New interview with actor Dustin Hoffman New conversation between producer Lawrence Turman and screenwriter Buck Henry New interview with film writer and historian Bobbie O’Steen about editor Sam O’Steen’s work on The Graduate Students of “The Graduate,” a short documentary from 2007 on the film’s influence “The Graduate” at 25, a 1992 featurette on the making of the film Interview with Nichols by Barbara Walters, from a 1966 episode of NBC’s Today show Excerpt from a 1970 appearance by singer-songwriter Paul Simon on The Dick Cavett Show Screen tests PLUS: An essay by journalist and critic Frank Rich Cover design by Eric Skillman, based on an original advertising campaign Current Posts Dustin Hoffman on His Screen Test for The Graduate February 24, 2016 Mike Nichols’s

 American classic The Graduate launched the career of Dustin Hoffman and made him one of the most sought-after actors of his generation.

Up to that point, Hoffman had mainly been . . . Read more » Film Essays The Graduate: Intimations of a Revolution By Frank Rich February 23, 2016 Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution. Read more » Clippings Celebrating Mike Nichols February 19, 2016 For over half a century, Mike Nichols’s varied talents and singular voice made him a cultural icon. From his early days in sketch comedy with Elaine May to his career as a theater director and . . . Read more » Photo Galleries The Graduate: Intimations of a Revolution By Frank Rich February 23, 2016 Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution. Read more » Clippings Did You See This? December 16, 2016 To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Adam Scovell visited the film’s unforgettable London locations. Another masterpiece made half a century ago is . . .

Read more » Clippings Did You See This? May 06, 2016 In honor of Film Forum’s Anna & Jean-Luc series, Interview Magazine has published a conversation from its July 1994 issue between Andrew Sarris and Jean-Luc Godard, in which Godard explains . . . Read more » Video Dustin Hoffman on His Screen Test for The Graduate February 24, 2016 Mike Nichols’s American classic The Graduate launched the career of Dustin Hoffman and made him one of the most sought-after actors of his generation. Up to that point, Hoffman had mainly been . . . Read more » Film Essays The Graduate: Intimations of a Revolution By Frank Rich February 23, 2016 Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution. Read more » Clippings Celebrating Mike Nichols February 19, 2016 For over half a century, Mike Nichols’s varied talents and singular voice made him a cultural icon. From his early days in sketch comedy with Elaine May to his career as a theater director and . . .

Read more » Photo Galleries The Graduate (1967) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) Background 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: This is Benjamin. He's a little worried about his future. 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). There was already a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo and middle-class values, and the breakthrough film mirrored that anarchic mood perfectly for America's youth of the 60s during the escalation of the Vietnam War.

However, in the final analysis, director Nichols actually subversively portrayed how aimless and unalive the disaffected young generation was (in the character of Benjamin) - and would become as they approached middle-age and worked in sterile corporate settings. [In the same year, it joined Bonnie and Clyde (1967) as one of the most popular films for the college-aged generation.] It was complemented by the music of the popular singing duo Simon and Garfunkel from their Grammy-winning The Sounds of Silence album (with songs composed earlier and previously-released except for "Mrs. Robinson"), with meaningful, haunting lyrics amidst koo-koo-kachoo sounds to enhance the film's moods and themes. The film was adapted first for the stage (at London's Gielgud Theatre), and then premiered on Broadway in early April of 2002, with Kathleen Turner reprising her role as Mrs. Robinson, along with Jason Biggs and Alicia Silverstone in the other major roles.

Many viewers of this mid-60's film were unaware that Harold Lloyd's race to the rescue to prevent the wedding of a girl he loves earlier appeared in the silent-era film comedian's influential film Girl Shy (1924). The film was nominated for a total of seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Supporting Actress (Katharine Ross), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. The film won only one award - Best Director. The Oscar-nominated screen adaptation by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (who appears as the hotel's desk clerk) was based on the novel of the same name by Charles Webb (a recent graduate of the East Coast's Williams College when he wrote his first novel). Warren Beatty, Charles Grodin, Robert Redford, and Burt Ward (the 'Robin' character of the TV series Batman) were all considered for the role of Benjamin, and Patricia Neal and Doris Day were considered for the part of Mrs. Robinson.

Short-statured (5'6") Jewish actor Dustin Hoffman had already been cast as Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind in The Producers (1968) when he bowed out and took the role of bumbling graduate Benjamin Braddock. His defection forced Mel Brooks to quickly recast the trademark role with Kenneth Mars. The Story The film opens with a close-up, disembodied image of Benjamin Braddock's face (Dustin Hoffman) [a 29 year-old convincingly playing a 21 year-old - Hoffman's second feature film appearance, and his first major film role]. It appears that he is alone and isolated - he is - but as the camera pulls back, it reveals that he is on a plane filled with passengers of various ages. He is returning home to Los Angeles from college in the East. Appearing slightly shy and unprepossessing, his face has a blank, expressionless, enervated, zombie-like look.

[The beginning and ending scenes of the film are symmetrically patterned after each other - the young couple are also surrounded by a busload of passengers, but remain isolated and impassive.] While standing mute by himself on the automated, moving walkway (with a monotonous recording: "Please hold the handrail, and stand to the right. If you wish to pass, please do so on the left") at the busy LAX airport, the credits play as The Sounds of Silence is heard on the soundtrack, reinforcing the theme of his emptiness and alienation from his surroundings: ...And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more. People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never shared, no one dared disturb the sound of silence... The scene of the retrieval of his luggage from a mechanized conveyor belt, and his disappearance into the terminal's crowd and to the outer doors dissolves into the next scene. Benjamin is in his upstairs bedroom in his upper-middle-class parents' home. He sits staring blankly ahead, positioned in his room in front of his aquarium tank (while observing its occupants) and wanting to be alone with his thoughts.

At the bottom of the aquarium tank is a model of a diver - symbolizing Ben's "drowning" and foreshadowing the scene in which he shows off scuba gear and hides from everyone by sinking to the bottom of the swimming pool. Ben is the pride of his wealthy Southern California suburbanite parents who have prepared a welcome, home-coming cocktail party for their recent graduate and invited all of their friends, rather than his, to the party. His father (William Daniels) finds his son upstairs and wonders if anything is wrong. Inarticulately, Ben tells his father that he is rudderless - he has no plans or direction to his life and is worried about his future: Ben: I'm just... film | University of Texas at Austin Libraries Title of Item Being Reviewed: (Required): Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood Review: (Required): Any serious or casual movie buff should read this book. It interweaves the stories of five movies nominated for Best Picture Oscar in 1967: "In the Heat of the Night", "The Graduate", "Bonnie and Clyde", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and - most improbably - "Dr. Dolittle".

These disparate films, with their long, tortured development and production histories vividly described, represent a watershed moment in the history of the US film industry. The old Studio System, dominated by moguls and super-producers like Jack Warner, Joe E. Levine, Stanley Kramer, Walter Mirisch, and the like, was tottering on its last legs, consumed with turning out expensive "road-show" musicals and epics like "Cleopatra", "The Sound of Music," and "The Bible" - which, if successful, could put a studio in fine financial condition. But if they failed, which they began to do with shocking regularity in the mid-60s, they could break a studio and end careers. "Guess/Dinner" and "Dr. Dolittle" represented this Old Hollywood model in 1967. "Dinner" was the last teaming of the legendary screen duo of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who died shortly after filming was completed. It was glossy, tame, and relentlessly old-fashioned despite its "risky" subject matter of an interracial marriage. Despite critical drubbing, it was a huge hit. "Dr.

Dolittle" conversely was a ghastly flop, attempting to bring an aging series of children's books to the big screen with a big splashy budget and the musical-comedy star of the moment Rex Harrison. None of it worked for a minute, the reviews were savage and the kids stayed away, but that didn't prevent its studio from buying its way into the Oscar race. But real change was in the air. Warren Beatty, then a successful young star, tried his hand at producing a film that would translate the concepts of the French New Wave to American audiences. "Bonnie and Clyde" was very stylish, hip, and youth-oriented despite its shocking - to audiences of the time - bloody violence. Beatty sold the concept to Warner Brothers, despite Jack Warner's antipathy to the concept and the final result. Even though Warner did their best to bury the film after its initial release, word of mouth and Beatty's relentless salesmanship eventually made the film a must-see hit and one of the most talked about and written about films of the last 50 years. Coming alongside it was

Question: For which 1967 film, based on a novel by Charles Webb, did Mike Nichols win the Oscar for Best Director?
Answer: The Graduate