The Graduate A5FN

infifa INVERNESSFILMFANS MEMBERS’ CHOICES Eden Court Cinema Tuesday 15 December 2015 at 7.15pm The Graduate 1967, U.S.A., Colour, Satirical comedy drama, Running time: 106 mins. Cast: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross, William Daniels, Elizabeth Wilson, Murray Hamilton, Brian Avery, Walter Brooke Director: Mike Nichols Screenplay: Calder Willingham, Buck Henry, from the novel by Charles Webb 'The Graduate', the funniest American comedy of the year, is inspired by the free spirit which the young British directors have brought into their movies. It is funny, not because of sight gags and punch lines and other tired rubbish, but because it has a point of view. That is to say, it is against something. Comedy is naturally subversive, no matter what Doris Day thinks. Most Hollywood comedies have non-movie assumptions built into them. One of the most persistent is that movie characters have to react to funny events in the same way that stage actors do. So we get Jerry Lewis mugging. But in the direct style of new British directors, the audience is the Notes compiled by target of the joke, and the funny events do not happen in the Ann MacInnes movie -- they are the movie. This theory is based upon a belief that audiences, blond Nordic pipe-smoking fraternity boy) having seen hundreds of movies, come into the kidnapped from the altar by Benjamin. He jams a theater with an instinctive knowledge of film cross into the church door to prevent pursuit, and shortland. So the new-style British comedies ("The they escape on a bus. Knack," "Morgan," "Alfie," "Tom Jones," "A Hard This is outrageous material, but it works Day's Night") go against standard practice, and their in "The Graduate" because it is handled in a use of film itself is part of the comedy. When straightforward manner. Dustin Hoffman is so something funny happens, the actors don't react; painfully awkward and ethical that we are forced to the movie itself reacts by what it shows next. admit we would act pretty much as he does, even in This is the case with "The Graduate," In his most extreme moments. Anne Bancroft, in a which Mike Nichols announces himself as a major tricky role, is magnificently sexy, shrewish, and self- new director. He introduces us to a young college possessed enough to make the seduction graduate (Dustin Hoffman) who returns to a convincing. ferociously stupid upper-middle-class California Miss Ross, a newcomer previously seen suburb. He would like the chance to sit around and in "Games," not only creates a character with think about his future for several months. You know depth and honesty, but is so attractive that now we – think? His family and their social circle demand know how Ann-Margret would have looked if she that he perform in the role of Successful Young had turned out better. Upward-Venturing Clean-Cut All-American College Nichols stays on top of his material. He Grad. At the end of two weeks Benjamin is driven never pauses to make sure we're getting the point. to such a pitch of desperation that he He never explains for the slow-witted. He never demonstrates a new scuba outfit (birthday present apologizes. His only flaw, I believe, is the from proud dad) by standing on the bottom of the introduction of limp, wordy Simon and Garfunkel family pool: Alone at last. songs and arty camera work to suggest the passage One of his parents' contemporaries of time between major scenes. Otherwise, "The (Anne Bancroft) seduces Benjamin, who succumbs Graduate" is a success and Benjamin's acute mostly out of weariness and disbelief. Then he falls honesty and embarrassment are so accurately in love with her daughter (Katharine Ross), and sets drawn that we hardly know whether to laugh or to in motion a fantastic chain of events that ends with look inside ourselves. Miss Ross (just married to a handsome blond Roger Ebert, 1967 Maybe I’m just cynical, or maybe I’ve simply watched too many of those wicked European films. Anyhow, I fail to see how The Graduate qualifies as the exciting new experience it has been cracked up to be. Basically, it operates as a giant confidence trick, with flash shots of discreet nudity to suggest Rabelaisian frankness, a handful of irrelevant protest songs to turn it into a symbol of student revolt, and some lush Lelouch-style photography to give it all a disarming wrapper. Behind the cunning packaging, this story of a virginal young man (Dustin Hoffman) and his initiation into the mysteries of sex by a rapacious older woman (Anne Bancroft) is as old as the history of Hollywood sex comedy and the days when a callow Cary Grant accepted the invitation to come up and see Mae West sometime... This said, however, The Graduate is very, very funny, with Mike Nichols making brilliant use of his sharp eye and ear for absurdity to pin down the state of absolute non-communication which exists as the graduate returns home wondering what to do with his life, and his family confidently sits back waiting for him to opt for success. ‘Young man, I have one word for you,’ says a family friend with the air of imparting the ultimate mystery, ‘Plastics!’ What else can a bemused young man do but sit in his bedroom, gloomily contemplating an aquarium, when words - stretched and deformed by an assortment of pregnant pauses and meaningful stares - drop like so many stones to the bottom of the conversational sea? He isn’t much happier when it comes to having an affair with the single-minded Mrs Robinson, who virtually dragoons him into bed and turns a deaf ear when he subsequently climbs out again with a pathetic cry of ‘Do you think we could just say a few words to each other first this time?’ The agonising experience of a first affair is hilariously exact - wanting to go to a movie instead, booking a hotel room for the first time, clumsily planting a kiss when the lady has just inhaled a mouthful of smoke - and somehow summed up in all its pathetic inadequacy by the fact that he never calls her anything but ‘Mrs Robinson,’ even in bed. Dustin Hoffman, with Feiffer face and spaniel eyes, and Anne Bancroft, febrile and alarming, play these scenes to perfection, exactly as Mike Nichols and Elaine May might have done them once upon a time. It is when the graduate falls in love with Mrs Robinson’s daughter (Katharine Ross) that the film begins to trail downhill. Driven into outer darkness by Mrs Robinson, now become a screaming harpy, he moons about in despair while Christ symbols and hints of incest creep in, and the whole thing starts to wallow in pretension. Still, it isn’t often one gets even half a film as funny as this. Tom Milne ,The Guardian 2014 Stars Fredric March, Myrna Loy and Dana Andrews are at their postwar Our next screening… peaks here, but it is the The Best Years performance of real-life wartime amputee Harold Russell that is most of Our Lives touching, and he rightly won two Opening our Academy Awards for his role (a William Wyler special award for bringing hope to other veterans along with that of Season www.facebook.com/inﬁfa best supporting actor). Awarded six Inverness Film Fans (InFiFa) meet other Oscars, this movie is hard to fortnightly at Eden Court Cinema for overpraise: clocking in at close to screenings and post-ﬁlm three hours, it provides a substantial discussions. Eden Court Cinema and rewarding experience for all For more information and to join us, Tuesday 5 January 2016 who watch it. free, go to: at 7.15pm www.invernessfilmfans.org.

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