Graduate, The [French Import]

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"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"

It is certainly easy for the extra clarity of high definition to seduce a viewer, and Studio Canal's HD DVD rendering of the classic 1967 comedy "The Graduate" is seductive stuff, even if it's not in the very top echelon of high-resolution video or audio. However, note that at this time if you want the disc in HD DVD you will have to obtain it from France (try Amazon France or Xploited Cinema). In the U.S., MGM Studios own the film, and as they are a Sony company, they are not too likely to do it up in HD DVD anytime soon.

Anyway, the real question is whether "The Graduate" still holds up well enough to justify the cost of buying a European import simply for the small additional realism of its reproduction. I'd say the answer is yes. "The Graduate" remains a classic, and even if the uncertainties facing our current crop of young people are different today than they were some four decades ago, I'm sure the problems of the here and now are every bit as daunting as they were back then.

Of course, the late sixties were a time of tremendous social change, and that left many of its younger generation more than a bit dazed and confused. Think about the changes wrought by the sexual revolution, desegregation, women's lib, the Vietnam War, the emerging drug culture, the drop in church attendance, the increase in divorce rates, the disintegration of the family unit, the beginnings of the two-job household, the evolution of technology, and on and on. It's a wonder those of us emerging from college back then could concentrate on any kind of future at all. And "The Graduate" addresses some of these same problems of alienation people face in our present world.

The charms of both "The Graduate" and "Easy Rider" touched a lot of people in the late sixties, two very different films with similar themes about the alienation of youth. Of the two, however, it's "The Graduate" that holds up best today, as funny and effective as ever. Not too many young persons are taking off and dropping out anymore, but they still often have that empty feeling that comes from being on their own for the first time and facing a seemingly meaningless and indifferent universe.

Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is about to turn twenty-one; he has just graduated from college, and he has returned to live temporarily with his parents before deciding what to do with the rest of his life. What he sees does not encourage him. His father (William Daniels) is a successful lawyer, his mother (Elizabeth Wilson) a housewife, their home a luxurious affair in an affluent suburban neighborhood, with a swimming pool and every imaginable convenience. He recognizes in them, and in their disposition toward him, a hollow materialism. They live for things, not people. Ben has merely become another of their objects of display to friends and relatives, a fancy cog that eventually must fit into the larger machine of existence. One of his dad's friends tells him that his future lies in "plastics," an apt description for the artificial people and attitudes around him. Ben can't stand it. He doesn't want to turn into his parents.

But without the background necessary to make strong and decisive value judgments, he flounders. As a matter of personal rebellion, he reluctantly enters into an affair with a manipulative older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father's business partner (Murray Hamilton) and a woman who has known him since he was born. The affair is the only thing at that moment that relieves him of his boredom and the dismal prospects of his future. But Ben eventually sees the affair for what it is, another vain and purposeless gesture.

Ben's saving grace comes in the person of Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross), the Robinsons' daughter, a young woman of such honesty, innocence, and beauty that she completely wins him over. For perhaps the first time in his life, Ben recognizes someone of merit, somebody to whom he can make a commitment, something of virtue worth fighting for. He learns that a sincere personal relationship is more important than the pursuit of wealth or temporal interests.

If any of this sounds preachy, let me assure you it is not. In fact, director Mike Nichols goes out of his way to make the film as humorous as possible and any messages as subtle as they can be. For instance, whether Ben retains any of the lessons he's learned from his experiences or eventually becomes what he hates most about his parents, we never find out, as the story ends on a vaguely ambiguous note.

Interestingly, Hoffman, looking younger than his age, was actually twenty-nine when he made "The Graduate" his film debut. Bancroft, acting older, was only thirty-six. Such are the illusions of Hollywood. The Academy nominated the film for seven Oscars in 1967: Best Picture (Lawrence Turman, producer), Director (Nichols), Actor (Hoffman), Actress (Bancroft), Supporting Actress (Ross), Cinematography (Robert Surtees), and Screenplay (Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, based on the novel by Charles Webb), the movie winning for Best Director.

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