Camera And Action, page 9
The music adds pertinence to the film and vice versa by bringing the realm of the psychological into the context of the younger generation's self-proclaimed disenchantment with its parent society. Rock music's increasingly political function as a mode of dissent for a younger generation coming of age during the late 1960s offered filmmakers songs with political voices. Since just "Mrs. Robinson" was written specifically for the film, movie-goers identified instantly with the soundtrack. The power of music helped make The Graduate more than just a classic story about a college graduate's difficulties, adjustments, or psychological struggle with his father.
Music also distinguishes Ben intragenerationally by identifying what he is not. The film establishes Ben's place in the generation gap by separating him from the hippie culture and ensures that he is not a campus agitator. A key moment comes when Ben is at a Santa Monica hamburger drive-in. Noisy youth listening to "The Big Green Pleasure Machine" surround his red convertible. Ben orders them to turn the music down and when they do not, he pulls up the top to his convertible, annoyed with their presence. This symbolic gesture contrasts Ben to the raucous celebrants of Sunset Boulevard who were attracting attention at the time and thereby distinguishes him from the coming counterculture and its youthful radicalism.53
Just as he separates himself from the Sunset Boulevard hippies, he also differentiates himself from political radicals. Halfway through the film on the Berkeley campus, he defends himself from being mistaken as a long-haired Berkeley disrupter. In the book, Ben's new landlord near the Berkeley campus, Mr. Berry, becomes wary of Ben's behavior and inquires, "Are you booking me or something?" To the contrary, in the film, his landlord, Mr. McCleery (Norman Fell), concludes Ben is trouble.
"Are you a student?"
"Not exactly - no," Ben answers.
"You're not one of those agitators ... one of those outside agitators?"
"Oh, no sir," Ben assures him.
Ben establishes his lines of identification and clarifies Mr. McCleery's confusion between the Braddock type of youthful rebellion and those marginalized as "outside agitators." The film maintains the element in Ben's character that Lawrence Thurman saw as the work's relevance -"wildness, yet an underlying decency."54 Ben stands as a twenty-one-year-old ideal rebel who helped define the proper form of rebellion against middle-class values, but Nichols would have been remiss to ignore his own generation.
The Graduate garnered iconic status because of its new star and music but the film's most egregious act, the affair between Ben and Mrs. Robinson, gave it its most prominent feature. In her daughter's bedroom shortly after Ben's graduation party, Mrs. Robinson drops her clothes and reveals her willful intent to allure the young graduate. Specific shots of Mrs. Robinson, through Ben's eyes, reveal her suntanned shoulders, white breasts, and her bikini underwear. Attempting to discard the empty formality of being a married woman, Mrs. Robinson forces Benjamin, still in his sport coat and tie, to look at her. Fearful of the consequences of her aggression, Ben escapes her home, but the thought of sex with her lingers, and he soon makes a phone call.
Mrs. Robinson, nearly twenty years his senior, accepts Ben's invitation to meet him at the Taft Hotel bar. After he telephones Mrs. Robinson, he leaves the phone booth and "moves about uncomfortably for a few moments." He "removes his jacket" and "crosses to the doors that lead to the main lobby," as the script explains.55 Just before he settles in, he holds the doors open for a group of elderly men and women dressed in traditional tuxedoes and formal wear and then a group of high schoolers going to a prom. Though each group confuses him as a guest for its respective parties, he escapes to the bar and shows he is independent of these personalities. The hotel is where Ben's sexual identity defines his generational revolt and confirms that Ben is neither teenybopper nor social conservative (despite his sport coat and tie).
The hotel room is a meeting place for the generations. The scenes portray both a predator and a middle-aged beauty shown through Anne Bancroft's strong demeanor and evocative shots of her body in lacy, leopard-pattern underwear. The visuals consist of bare shoulders, of the two lying side by side, Hoffman in his boxers, and Mrs. Robinson suggestively taking off and putting on her nylon stockings. Her outstanding beauty and California tan lines bring to the screen a stylish appeal that also allows her character to transcend sordidness by being provocative - victimized and victimizer at the same time. She is Nichols' answer to what happened to the prototypical, martini-drinking, 1950s woman. Anne Bancroft's screen appeal seeps through the character's alleged corruption. Her glamour adds another aspect to generational sensibility, placing her outside the caricatured parents and their frogman gifts. If one could not trust Mrs. Robinson, it was and was not because she was over thirty. Her attractiveness and association with the possibility of fantasy seen through the eyes of Ben further publicized West Coast affluence upon which the film's stance on sexuality depended. Sex with Mrs. Robinson made the film memorable, current, and critically acceptable.
The two generations meet in the Taft Hotel in The Graduate (1967); Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson, a sexual outlaw in leopard underwear, is not exactly the Doris Day prototype (Photofest).
Once in the hotel room, Mrs. Robinson cleverly cajoles Ben out of his anguish. "For God's sake, can you imagine my parents?" Ben frets. "If they were right here in this room right now, what they would say ... they brought me up. I think they deserve a little better than this - than jumping into bed."56 Though Mrs. Robinson's strength as temptress is powerful, Ben is fully capable of refusing her seduction, but stays in the room after Mrs. Robinson derides him:
The attraction between the older woman and the college graduate is not anything new, but its treatment of sexual transgression in the "safe" mainstream is. Ben of the novel, for example, hitchhikes, sleeps with prostitutes, and lives with the homeless. His healthy sex life parallels his curiosity for life on the road. The film, on the other hand, discounts the novel's emphasis on the fabled journey as a rite of passage. Instead, Nichols connects the generationgap debates with hotel sex. This film extends the boundaries of where the progressive picture could go regarding sexual territory.
Mrs. Robinson is the sexual outlaw and seducer of Ben but is comfortable with sex without love.57 By contrast, Benjamin's engagement in hotel sex appears necessary for his rescue. The affair attracts him for its liberating potential. Sexuality will be his generation's last emancipator.
Hoffman's nakedness is memorable enough but not because he is a sex object. Rather, he made new sense of the star phenomenon through his small body and being casual about his activity with Mrs. Robinson. A bit nerdy, common, and unconventional, Ben failed one viewer's assumptions of pin-up poster material. In a letter to the editor, the viewer complained that "it is next to impossible to believe the older woman ... could be attracted to a boy who is physically and socially far from the American Dream."" The controlled sex scenes make Hoffman's character seem real and vital and add a touch of "telling it like it is" to the fantasy of sex because he is not the poster boy.
Hollis Alpert was convinced that Benjamin's affair with Mrs. Robinson was "probably the funniest and maybe the saddest affair yet shown on the overexperienced screen. "51 Another critic described the affair as "wildly funny, revealing and free."60 Andrew Sarris of the wellknown Village Voice argued that it was "easier to be interesting with an unconventional sexual relationship than with a conventional love pairing."61 Sexuality on screen asserted the film's contemporary attitudes toward common taboos. Whether one described the affair as wildly funny or critiqued it as timid, it still leads to the same point. Both perspectives confirm the film's "truth" about sex because the issue centers on taste and levels of sophistication rather than moral legitimacy. Against traditional authority that once claimed sexuality as a religious and private matter, this film helped the younger generation advance its adversarial position.
The relative endorsement of the film's portrayal of sexuality in view of the picture's widespread popularity suggests that the feature film entered a new safe zone, despite bending borders of acceptability through sex with Mrs. Robinson. Her matter-of-fact involvement with Benjamin helped transcend earlier Doris Day prototypes. In addition, Bancroft contrasted to other stars such as Marilyn Monroe or Ann Margret by drawing attention to female effectiveness and away from overt sensuality. The mature siren and her $175,000 worth of jewels and furs displayed willful strength. Ben's straightforward engagement helps reinforce his role as truth seeker and takes the narrative to its provocative resolution. Her seduction of Ben exposes the real American tragedy - an empty marriage. As Ben later tells Mr. Robinson, "We got into bed with each other. But it was nothing. It was nothing at all. We - we might just as well have been shaking hands."
Since the film encouraged audiences to identify with Benjamin's relative naivete as Mrs. Robinson's prey, The Graduate also suggested that sex without passion was destructive, thus balancing rebellion with Mrs. Robinson's cool beauty and casual sex, but still exploiting the changing social environment and sexual attitudes. Ben is torn by equally powerful feelings of loyalty in contrast to the pathos of Mrs. Robinson, produced obliquely by her life of material affluence and leisure. This contrast is necessary for the film's generational statement about those over thirty. Ben ultimately succeeds in his critique of modern American society when he rejects Mrs. Robinson and chooses her daughter, Elaine. She is the proper contrast to his moral dilemma and to his revolt against objectification - both material and sexual. She becomes his way out of adult confinement and the film's tool for building its final critique of the parent generation. Passion for Elaine begins the de-objectification process and leads to Ben's personal investment in his future. Mrs. Robinson represents the prospect of fantasy and a bit of wildness for the young man, but Elaine grounds the story in its theme of "underlying decency."
Ben's first date with Elaine begins at a striptease bar. First, Ben forces Elaine to watch the stripper and then runs after her when Elaine hurries out of the club, humiliated in front of the stripper. Ben later apologizes by telling her the story of his adulterous affair without revealing his mistress' identity. For the first time in the film, he has a genuine conversation (though not completely truthful), revealing sincere feeling. Once his attention shifts from disingenuous behavior with Mrs. Robinson to true love, the narrative ceases its satiric innuendo. Reinforcing the shift, the setting moves from places of adult authority (hotels and suburban homes) to the red convertible and the symbolic college campus, the University of California at Berkeley. The switch from critique to love establishes Ben's truthfulness, sincerity, and authenticity, thereby, reinforcing generational duality and confirming the value in escape from material objectification and alienation. Mrs. Robinson's sexuality in the public space of the Taft Hotel threatens Ben's emotional security; his red car and campus apartment restore it. Sexual liberation both establishes and contrasts to authentic true love outside of the space of parental authority. What was at stake in this example of private/public, adult/youth was the affirmation of generational identity. The hotel sex scenes with Hoffman's image as authentic and honest empower the younger generation and offer it a chance to imagine itself as those who have discovered the hollowness of the older generation's lifestyle .12
The strongest indictment of Mrs. Robinson's character, despite her sexual vitality and inordinate beauty, occurs when Elaine discovers her duplicity. Mrs. Robinson is rain soaked with black, stringy, dripping hair. Her drenched black dress contrasts to the white wall where she stands outside Elaine's bedroom as her daughter discovers the truth.
The sympathetic shift to Elaine frees Ben from objectification by her mother as a conventional sex object and by his parents as an intellectual showpiece. The move allows him to recover his humanity, despite his former affair. Through his pursuit of Elaine, Ben challenges the conventional image of antimaterialism. He is not a victim but an agent for generational reformation. He is quite the opposite of what Kael and Simon accused him of trying to be, the Tolstoyean peasant, the dripping innocent .61
Considering Hollywood's newfound freedom amid changing social expectations, The Graduate places Ben squarely inside the society that produced him. At the same time, instead of perpetuating the image of the mythic victim, Ben negotiates new boundaries for mainstreamers and represents the younger generation's "truth task."64 Ben, both truth seeker and transgressor, invites viewers to cross social borders "politely" and provokingly.
The picture drew interest because of Mrs. Robinson but ultimately returned to its theme of transgression with the concluding sequence. Until then, it appeared that the film would return Elaine to her boyfriend Carl. Shortly after Ben locates Elaine on the Berkeley campus, he manages to catch up with her walking with Carl at the local zoo. As if in a showdown with the pre-med student, Ben sandwiches Elaine between them - tall, blond Carl, Elaine, and short Ben. Later, Ben seeks information on Elaine's whereabouts at Carl's fraternity house. He searches for leads in the locker room amid the "walking surfboards." Hoffman's smallboy image contrasts to the southern California fraternity brothers who chide and joke about Carl, the "makeout king."65
Ben's quest of honor is to convince Elaine of his worth, but that ends when Elaine has already married the blond-blue-eyed Carl. Ben proves his commitment to Elaine through a speedy chase down California freeways in his red convertible to the Santa Barbara Protestant church where Carl and Elaine have just been pronounced man and wife. Carl kisses Elaine and is about to leave with her when Ben pounds on the church's glass partition, shocking the congregation and shouting for Elaine. "It's too late," Mrs. Robinson screams at Ben. "It's not too late for me," her daughter yells back. Elaine runs for ethnic Ben, who swings a wooden crucifix before an angry congregation. He rescues Elaine from them by jamming the church doors shut with the cross and the two escape. The film's one last transgression occurs, most clearly, through the sacred image of the wooden cross. Swinging that image gives the film one final inflammatory but fashionable means to rebellion. As one Graduate fan remembered, "I was shocked that he swung the cross. I didn't know you could do that."66
Ben in his casual shirt and Elaine in her designer wedding dress flee from the angry crowd and jump onto a city bus. The camera pans the faces of working-class people who stare dumbfounded at the frivolous runaways rushing past the filled seats on the city transit. The couple sits at the back of the bus and stares enigmatically straight ahead. Not embraced in a love grip, nor engrossed in their fondness for the triumph over those left behind, they remain disconnected from the public peering back and the film ends. The successful challenge makes a critical comment on what would become a passionless marriage if Elaine stayed with Carl. Ben rescues Elaine from the hurtful future as wife of the "makeout king" by using the most immediate resource - his own two feet. He has also produced an authentic and genuine reality of rebellion by breaking through the glass barrier and redefining a most sacrosanct symbol, the wedding vows. Elaine's desire and Ben's resourcefulness rescue young people from parental and religious authority inside traditional institutions.
The ending dismembers the sacred institution of marriage and conventional sexual rules by representing rituals as optional. This sequence targets the sizeable religious population that grappled with the effects of the liberalization of tradition during the 1960s. As Andrew Sarris remarked, the film "not only shatters ... monogamous mythology; it does so in the name of a truer love." Sarris admits he "was with The Graduate all the way because [he] responded fully to its romantic feelings." The film was "moving precisely because its hero passes from a premature maturity to an innocence regained, an idealism reconfirmed." Sarris pointed out that "even the overdone caricatures that surround the three principals cannot diminish the cruel beauty of this love story."67 In the words of filmmaker Stanley Kaufmann, the film conveys "a new kind of love: a love based on recognition of identical loneliness on their side of the generational gap, a gap which - never mind how sillily it is often exploited in politics and pop culture - irrefutably exists. "68 True love outweighs hotel sex and formal vows. Thus, Elaine's compliance exposes her mother's limitations and engenders possibility for a rebellious younger generation.
Subverting the narrative by taking a disheveled Ben into sacred territory -which causes Elaine to discard her new husband, the families, and relatives in favor of boarding a bus to nowhere - brought a film era to an end. With Mrs. Robinson, the Production Code's "Doris Day" and "twin bed" formula receded into the archives. This film endorsed Hollywood's function of portraying sexual love more in tune with social changes in attitude and also challenged the industry's invented regulations with its sexless marriages (with one foot on the floor). This film critiques that past as a sham and a superficial control by the industry, not for the good of society.69
Nichols' ending shifts the tragedy from Ben and his moral development to the older generation and its moral failing that denied the likes of Mrs. Robinson a choice.
Anne Bancroft's performance never convincingly leaves Mrs. Robinson destroyed. The film allows a complexity for her character that is missing in her husband and Ben's parents and therefore encourages empathy. When Benjamin and Elaine opt for an honest love relationship, they implicate Mr. Robinson as much as his wife. Ultimately, his success remains both the cause of his wife's loneliness and the means of her exploits. She has stepped outside the marriage parameters in the most immediate way possible. Her agency and relative effectiveness deliver her from the burden of having only two choices - to be happily married or to be a sensual commodity. All in all, the film portrays Mrs. Robinson's tragedy and her sadness as the older generation's limitations, now corrected by both Ben and Elaine. What is "too late" for her mother will be salvaged by Elaine, who makes sure viewers understand her words, "not for me."
