All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S01E04.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL:
The Sound of Silence #

# Hello, darkness, my old friend

# I've come to talk with you again

# Because a vision softly creeping

# Left its seeds
while I was sleeping...

The year is 1967,

the city is Los Angeles,

and floating on a sky-blue pool

is a young man
named Benjamin Braddock.

He has returned home from college

with no idea what he wants
from the future,

or indeed the present.

He is a lost soul,
adrift on his parents' wealth,

and played by an oddly-built unknown

named Dustin Hoffman.

Mrs Robinson,
you're trying to seduce me.

(GIGGLES)

Aren't you?

Well, no, I hadn't thought of it.

How would you say
The Graduate defined an era?

It re-defined an era, really.

When you think of
the youth films of the 1960s,

a young America
thought it could do anything...

and snubs to the older generation.

And here comes a film
which suggests the exact opposite.

Here's young Dustin Hoffman.

He's a college-educated
middle-class lad

with everything in his favour.

He could get a good job
just like that,

but he doesn't know
what he wants.

He doesn't know
anything about anything.

He's completely doubtful
about his life,

compared to the hippies' 1960s,
the earlier 1960s,

it's a completely different outlook.

(EXHALES)

(WATER SPLASHES)

The Graduate defined an era.

But more than that,

it turned a caustic eye
on an increasingly divided America:

by wealth, by age, by sensibility.

With its shimmering melancholy
and bittersweet humour,

it landed firmly into a generation

and reflected that generation.

(THE SOUND OF SILENCE CONTINUES)

# And the sign flashed out
its warning

# In the words that it was forming

# And the sign said,

# "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls

# "And tenement halls

# "And whispered in the sounds...

# ..of silence. #

(SONG ENDS)

TV:
"Recently, the March Of Time

"conducted an extensive survey
of North Carolina's class of '49.

"They are men and women
with a deeply felt appreciation

"of the blessings
our society has afforded them.

"In our March Of Time Survey,
they agree almost unanimously

"that they have attained the goal
set for themselves in college.

"Only one graduate expressed
dissatisfaction with life."

"The class of '49 has made its dream
of material security come true.

"And this insular contentment,
for better or worse,

"is finding its reflection
in American society today."

Is anything wrong?
No, no.

We're just on our way downstairs.
The Carlsons are here.

They are? Well, come on.

They came all the way from Tarzana.

Come on, let's get cracking.

It's a wonderful thing
to have so many devoted friends.

The astonishing script

was by comedian-turned-screenwriter
Buck Henry,

who had unlocked the best seller
on which it was based.

Behind the camera was
comedian-turned-director

Mike Nichols,

making only his second film.

Together,
actors, writer, and director

captured an elusive mood

like sunlight on a swimming pool.

At once very funny, even farcical,

but tinged in despair.

A symphony of
embarrassments and heartbreak

that revolutionised Hollywood.

It was called The Graduate.

In 1963, Charles Webb
wrote a book called The Graduate.

He'd been at
an East Coast university

and at the age of 24,

he decided to
put all of his experiences

in the Californian lifestyle.

He really really wanted to, sort of,

exorcise his feelings
about his life.

Charles Webb's novel The Graduate
was almost an autobiography.

He'd grown up on the West Coast.
He'd been blonde, tall, sun-tanned.

His parents had a swimming pool

and when he moved east
to university,

he very much rejected
that lifestyle.

He found it repellent, and he wrote
a book which really attacked

everything that he'd known
growing up.

There was, he said, no Mrs Robinson,

that had been an invention of his.

His real problem was the conformity
of the Californian existence.

This idea that everybody lived
this very conformist,

very smartly dressed...

With cocktail parties where no one
said anything of any meaning,

and everyone thought
their kids ought to go into
some kind of great future.

He was particularly appalled by
his parents

and their friends' existence,
which he saw as very zombie-like,

this endless round
of socialising and work

that he really wanted no part of.
He wanted to get off that carousel.

The journey to a phenomenon

begins with a young, untested
producer named Lawrence Turman

who had read the novel and thought,
"This is about me."

There are also two images
that stuck in his mind:

a boy in a scuba suit

trapped
at the bottom of a swimming pool,

and that same boy on a bus
with a girl in a wedding dress.

Two images that will be
seen in the final film.

He didn't have
a lot of money to work with.

But with his shoestring budget,

he managed to option
the rights to The Graduate

after reading a sort of mixed review
of it in the New York Times.

But it captured his interest,
he picked up the book

and he optioned it for
only one thousand dollars

because no one else
really wanted the book.

And so began
the fairly long and arduous process

of getting The Graduate
from a novel to the screen.

On a hunch,

he sought out the 33-year-old
theatrical director Mike Nichols,

who was growing increasingly
interested in the movies.

In Broadway circles,

Nichols was famed for sending up a
particular brand of American anxiety.

On a hunch,
Mike Nichols turned to Buck Henry,

co-creator of TV's Get Smart
to write a screenplay.

He was concerned about
getting a screenwriter

that could do the job on the script
fairly quickly and easily.

He wasn't even
thinking about actors yet,

but he needed to attach somebody
appealing to this package.

Even with Mike Nichols on board,

a director who was so popular
and fairly well-known in showbiz,

he just simply could not
seem to sell it to a studio.

They almost all turned him down.
They didn't find it funny.

Execs said they didn't understand
what was comedic about the script,

I think probably because
it was so deadpan.

It just failed to connect

to a often financially floundering
movie business

that was in the market
largely to make big comedies,

big musicals, big war films.

People just didn't seem to get it.

Why do you think Mike Nichols
was the right man?

He'd come from Broadway, hadn't he?

Why do you think
he was the perfect director?Well...

He turned out to be
the perfect director,

but there was a great deal of doubt.

Some of them hated the book,
of course.Yeah.

And they hated the piece of theatre,

so they wouldn't entertain the film
at all.

And then they said,
"Who is this Mike Nichols anyway?

"He's never done anything much,
except in the theatre."

It's a great risk.

So it was a very difficult film
to make.

MRS BRADDOCK: Here's Ben.
Excuse me, just a minute.

Listen, everybody.
I want you all to be quiet.

I've got
Ben's college yearbook here

and I just want to read you some of
the wonderful things about Ben.

Be quiet, please!

Captain of the cross-country team,
head of the debating club,

associate editor of the college
newspaper in his junior year

managing editor in his senior.

To me, The Graduate is a film
about...

It's about the generation gap,

but it's really about someone who's
just trying to find their own way

and they don't want to be
pressurised

by the values of their parents
almost.

But it's not a dropout movie.

It's not about someone
who's going to go to Woodstock

and lead
a totally alternative lifestyle.

It's about someone who's within
the middle class, essentially.

You know, it's in Pasadena,
in a suburb of Los Angeles.

He's just rootless
and he is trying to find his way.

(FISH TANK BUBBLES)

Oh, I guess this isn't the bathroom,
is it?

It's, uh, down the hall.

How are you, Benjamin?
Fine, thank you, Mrs Robinson.

The, uh, bathroom's
down at the end of the hall.

Such a pleasant room.

Eventually, the only producer
he could get interested,

after two years of trying,

was a
producer called Joseph E Levine

who was known as a schlock-meister,

by which they meant that he would
buy European over-the-top films

like Hercules, he would put
his own name over the top of it,

he would market the hell out of it,
do an over-dubbed version

and make a lot of money
out of a cheap purchase.

He was gradually,
with his company Embassy Pictures,

trying to move into
a more respectable...

actually making the films,

not just buying European
celluloid and selling it on.

So he wanted to start investing,

and he knew that the director
Mike Nichols had cache.

All three of them,
producer, writer, and director,

thought of the material
in the same way.

They all saw themselves
as Benjamin Braddock.

That was the point
that Hollywood missed.

In 1967,

this alienated graduate,

locked in his own head,
spoke to a generation.

Will you come in, please?

What?

I'd like you to come in
until I get the lights on.What for?

Because I don't feel safe
till I get the lights on.

(PIANO MUSIC)

May I ask you a question?

What do you think of me?

What do you mean?

You've known me
nearly all your life.

You must have formed
some opinion of me.

Well, I always thought that
you were a very nice person.

Did you know I was an alcoholic?

On the page, Benjamin was
a golden boy Californian.

The writer, Charles Webb,
was fair-haired and six-foot plus.

Everyone agreed, including Nichols,

that he had to be played by
Robert Redford.

So a meeting was arranged,

and Nichols knew straight away
that he wasn't right for the part.

He could never play a loser.

So the search began
for the perfect loser.

Enter Dustin Hoffman,

10 years into
a faltering New York stage career,

feeling certain
the movies are not for him.

And then to cast...

Dustin Hoffman is... How absurd?

Dustin Hoffman was 30 at the time.
Yes.

And it was odd casting
because he's too old,

and she's too young really.

But Nichols saw something in the
chemistry between them, didn't he?

He sensed the actors could
achieve what he wanted from them.

Oh, yes, he did in the end.

I mean, it was astonishing.

Doris Day was asked to do it,

Jeanne Moreau was asked to do it,

Half of Hollywood
was asked to do it.

(SOPHISTICATED ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

TV: "In Acapulco,

"a lavish dinner party attracts
a wide variety of celebrities,

"including Lynda Bird Johnson and
her actor friend George Hamilton.

"Film star John Wayne
enjoys the festivities,

"while Mexican movie actress
Dolores del Rio and her husband

"are also among the famous guests.

"Lynda and George refuse to comment

"on speculation
about a future wedding,

"while they spent the gay evening
as almost constant dancing partners.

"A request to have the press barred
from the party was refused."

Mike Nichols met Buck Henry
at a party thrown by Jane Fonda.

This was a fascinating mix of people

because in one room there was
older generation Hollywood royalty,

and the other half
was the younger generation,

represented by Jane and her brother

and an all the people
that they liked.

So it was
a very, very interesting mix,

completely cross-generational.

Mike Nichols really enjoyed
his improvisational style.

They riffed together at the party.

They really enjoyed each other's
company, and he thought,

"This guy can deliver
the character of Benjamin Braddock."

He could see in him

the same sense of
being Benjamin Braddock

that Mike Nichols had
first responded to in The Graduate.

Robert Redford was very keen to play
the part of Benjamin Braddock

and he had negotiation talks
with Mike Nichols.

Of course, they'd worked together on
Barefoot in the Park,

which was Redford's first play,

so they knew each other.

It was quite clear to Nichols

that Redford was totally wrong
for the part.

He asked him, "Have you ever
had any trouble with women?"

And Robert Redford said,
"What do you mean?"

And he said,
"There we are. That's the answer.

"That's exactly what I mean."

He said, "You're not anxious.

"You don't have that sort of
anxiety. You don't have it."

He said, "Well, I can act it."

But the fact is that
what Nichols wanted,

and what he finally got,

was the actual visual representation

of the anxieties and the problems
that Benjamin Braddock has.

So, Dustin was
a jobbing stage actor in New York

and had been for almost a decade

by the time The Graduate and
Hollywood really came calling.

He was 29
when he starred in The Graduate.

He had worked up some steam in a few
plays that got decent write-ups.

He had recently had something

which got on the cover of
the New York Times Magazine.

But generally speaking,
it was a bit of a long haul for him.

He was friends with
many of the great luminaries

that would turn out to also be
very successful.

He shared a flat with Gene Hackman
at a certain point,

but he often struggled to get gigs.

He looked very Jewish and that could
be a real handicap at the time.

He said he was always, sort of,
cast in particular types of roles,

sort of typecast often.

And he did a lot of other jobs
at the same time.

He worked in Macy's
in the toy department.

He worked as an attendant
in a psych ward.

He really knew what it was
to struggle to make ends meet.

There were times where
he had considered giving up

and maybe going into directing
or doing something else,

so it was remarkable that he had
maintained the grit at that point

to even be still in the running
for a film like The Graduate.

The screen test
couldn't have gone any worse.

Nichols arranged for Hoffman
to come to Los Angeles,

and he arrived crippled with nerves,

sleepless, pale as of bedsheet,

intimidated by
all of the tanned Californian crew,

in awe of Katharine Ross,

who'd been lined up
to play Elaine Robinson.

He stuttered his lines.

He failed to heed
what Nichols wanted from him.

It went on for 12 hours.

But on screen, it worked.

All that agitation,
all that lost boy stammer

added up to Benjamin Braddock.

Hoffman brings magnificent
self-consciousness to the role,

an itch beneath the skin

that amplified
the alienation of the character.

Well, no, I hadn't thought of it.
I feel very flattered.

Mrs Robinson, will you forgive me
for what I just said?

It's alright.
It's not alright.

It's the worst thing
I ever said to anyone.Sit down.

Please forgive me
because I like you.

I don't think of you that way,
but I'm mixed up.

It's alright. Finish your drink.

Mrs Robinson, it makes me sick
that I said that to you.

Well, forget it right now.
Finish your drink.

Mike Nichols' next step
was to find Mrs Robinson.

This was...

an equally difficult task.

He chose Anne Bancroft because

they wanted an American actress
who had a European quality,

someone who could seem
a little bit out of place

but was very much of the place.

He could see the frustration
that Anne Bancroft herself had.

She had originally been
a successful young starlet

who played glamorous roles

and then Hollywood had sort of
given up on her

and stopped allowing her
to develop her career.

So she'd gone into theatre and
still slightly resented Hollywood

for the way it had cast her off.

And she just fit the role perfectly.

She looked and talked the role.

She was too young.
She was 35 and Mrs Robinson is 45.

In fact, she was quite close
to Dustin Hoffman in age,

but he felt that she had the talent
to bring it up in age terms,

and she does have this very
convincing weariness about her.

It just worked so well.

The other thing I really feel
about all of this is that

it's speaking to people
who are within the mainstream,

within the middle classes,
broadly speaking,

but facing some
kind of dissatisfaction.

I felt that dissatisfaction is
really what The Graduate's about.

Mrs Robinson is dissatisfied.
She's in a loveless marriage.

Benjamin is dissatisfied

with the fact that his parents
want him to go work in plastics.

You know, everyone's dissatisfied.

Even the parents, you feel like
they're living the American dream

without any real, deeper thought
behind it.

So I think
it's a film about dissatisfaction.

If Hoffman was the star,

the dark heart of The Graduate
is Anne Bancroft's Mrs Robinson.

There had been plans
to cast Hollywood greats

like Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth,
or even Doris Day.

Nichols had met with Ava Gardner
and been dazzled,

but knew she was wrong.

In truth, he was set on Bancroft.

There was something brittle
and beautiful about her.

She'd been cast aside by Hollywood.

She was also an ex,

and he remembered the cynicism,

always one quip ahead of you.

And she brings to the role
a superb performance,

broken-hearted, wounded, insolent,
and world-weary,

and always
we get that sense of bitterness.

If you look back on it now,

why do you think Dustin Hoffman
somehow embodies Benjamin

and Anne Bancroft
fulfils what we need in Mrs Robinson?

Anne Bancroft was a great actress.

No doubt about that at all.

She really holds the screen tightly
throughout,

and you believe in her, even though
she does seem a bit young.

Dustin Hoffman...

the very doubtfulness of his acting
is a help.

He's not a confident actor
at that stage in his career

but it works
because he's not very confident.

That's the whole point about him.

So...

The two work wonderfully together.

And when...
in the latter half of the film,

Mrs Robinson fades out...

..so does the film in a way.

Yeah. You miss her presence.
You really miss her.

Katharine Ross is very good

as the girl Dustin Hoffman
eventually falls for.

But those two as a pair are not
as interesting as this older woman.

I mean, the thought of
an older woman with a young man

is still shocking today.

People say, "Ooooh!"

They don't mind
the other way around,

but the older woman
with the young man somehow...

Uh...

(CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY)
I don't quite know how to put this.

"Benjamin."

Look, I was thinking about
that time after the party.

"Where are you?"

And I was wondering if I could
buy you a drink or something.

"Where are you?"
Uh, the Taft Hotel.

"Did you get a room?"

No.

Now I know it's pretty late
and if you'd rather-

"Give me an hour."
What?

"I'll be there in an hour."
(CALL DISCONNECTS)

(BREATHES NERVOUSLY)

(WHIMPERS)

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL:
Scarborough Fair/Canticle #

# Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

# Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme

# Remember me to one who lives there

# She once was a true love of mine. #

Halfway through production,

Nichols's brother sent him a copy of
Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme,

the new album by Folk troubadours
Simon and Garfunkel.

He would listen to it incessantly
for a month,

and he realised this was
the sound of The Graduate.

Poetic, wry, haunting,
and heartbreaking.

Simon and Garfunkel were really
the perfect artists for The Graduate

because they had this sound which
was part of the 1960s counterculture

but it was gentle.

It fitted into the mainstream
very much.

A lot of that was down to

Paul Simon's discovery
of English folk music.

He came to England in the mid-1960s,

and he was hanging out with
people like Martin McCarthy

who was a big English folk singer,

and he was learning
how to fingerpick

and do this rather intricate

but very melodic
style of guitar playing.

And that has a kind of
winsome quality.

It's got a questing quality,

that English folk style,

which he then took and applied a
kind of American sensibility to it.

So that's when you end up with
songs like The Sound of Silence

and April She Will Come.
Songs like that.

The music was essential.

Simon & Garfunkel,
who were the folk singers,

part of the era's music of protest,
was the soundtrack.

That gave the film
a very 1960s feel.

So when you're hearing songs like
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme,

or when you were hearing
The Sound of Silence,

these were the soundtrack to a lot
of the youth movement protests.

So, it really focused it
on the teenagers

and the young people of the day.

Famously, Simon & Garfunkel's
album had been given to Mike Nichols

halfway through filming.

He was listening to it
in the shower quite a lot

and decided to try
The Sound of Silence

over the montage of Dustin Hoffman

post his initial encounter
with Mrs Robinson,

and he realised it was right.

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL:
The Sound of Silence
# And the people bowed and prayed

# To the neon god they made

# And the sign flashed out
its warning

# In the words that it was forming

# And the sign said,

# "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls

# "And tenement halls

# And whispered
in the sounds...

# ..of silence. #

The lyricism and the melancholy
of Simon and Garfunkel's music

lended itself really well
to Benjamin's loneliness.

In the film you kind of see it as
his internal monologue in some way.

It really kind of gives something
to the film.

At this point,
poised on the cusp of

the whole New Hollywood movement
of the 1970s,

you see that pop and rock
soundtracks

were consistently used more and more
on films made by younger filmmakers.

And this is one of the first,
along with a film like Easy Rider,

to include a modern soundtrack.

It lends some zip and some urgency,
I think,

to the overall feeling of the film.

And of course, in 1968,

Mrs Robinson became number one
on the charts as well.

It is interesting how Mike Nichols
used Simon Garfunkel.

Initially, it was going to be
orchestra, the usual approach.

He contacted Paul Simon,
and he brought Paul Simon in

and, I think, Art Garfunkel too.

Initially, it was using
Scarborough Fair as guide music.

It wasn't er...

It was just putting it together
against the visuals

and showing an idea
of how it might come across.

Paul Simon was watching,
and he was...

He started coming up with
this little riff,

it's quite a famous riff now,
the riff on Mrs Robinson.

Humming along, initially, it was
a kind of free association of words.

"God bless you, Mrs Roosevelt"

which would've been an entirely
different film if that'd stayed in,

You know, Joe DiMaggio,
these people from the past.

It's almost like he was kind of
riffing on America's past,

America's 20th-century past.

Writing this song
which didn't have any clear meaning,

but it's almost like the meaning
made itself clear after the event.

God bless you, please,
Mrs Robinson.

None of it was formed.

It wasn't that he...

he didn't sit down there
and write the lyrics.

He was watching the film,
had his guitar, riffing about,

and then half of it, of course,
has no words whatsoever.

It's just those wordless vocals

because he was just doing it
as he went along.

From that came one of the most
famous songs of the 20th century.

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL:
Mrs Robinson #

# And here's to you, Mrs Robinson

# Jesus loves you
more than you will know

# Woah, woah, woah. #

That song on its own,

more or less,
sold the movie.

It put it
in a completely different league.

It became
its own sort of phenomenon.

It made Simon and Garfunkel.

Although they were rising stars,

Mrs Robinson was the song
that put them right up there.

I mean, they were American number
one for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And at the same time, it sort of fed
back into the success of the film

because Mrs Robinson was
the iconic character of the movie.

Absolutely perfect.

An artist adrift
in a world of plastic conformity,

seeking an identity,

The Graduate is as much
the story of Mike Nichols

as it is Benjamin Braddock.

He will be introducing
a new emotional language

to American film.

It's a huge influence on the likes of
Steven Soderberg, David Lynch,

The Coen Brothers,

Paul Thomas Anderson,
Quentin Tarantino,

who all took from it
that natural irony that it had,

that skewed view of Los Angeles
that it showed.

"Dear Benjamin,
Please forgive me

"because I know what I'm doing
is the best thing for you.

"My father is so upset.
You've got to understand.

"I love you,
but it would never work out."

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL:
Mrs Robinson #

(ENGINE ROARS)

The extraordinary thing
about The Graduate is that...

In 1967,
the studio system was wobbly,

it was starting to sort of
unravel itself,

it was outdated, outmoded.

They were still making movies

and they were still making
some great movies,

but there was a new generation
waiting in the wings

to actually break down
the doors of Old Hollywood

and make new kinds of movies,
make a different kind of movie

for a different kind of generation.

There was a generation of kids
out there

who did not want to see
the old Hollywood stars,

magnificent as they were,

they wanted their own stars,

they wanted their own people.
And they didn't want...

people who they looked up to,

they wanted people who
they could identify with.

Someone slightly geeky,

someone who wanted to be cool
but wasn't,

someone who was anxious
about his life,

as they all were at that stage.

The Graduate was a huge hit
in its year of release

but that was not what everybody
expected in Hollywood.

When Joseph E Levine took it around
the other studio heads,

they said,
"This is a terrible film."

When it was tested in front of
professionals, they all said,

"Oh, this is not gonna work. It's
an OK film, but it's terribly cast."

So there was
this feeling of bleak despair.

At one point, Levine was going to
downgrade the film

to a very limited release.

But then he decided to try
showing it in college campuses.

Now,
what's interesting here is that

we think of this film as being
a very radical film

about youthful rebellion.

And it is in a way,

but it's also
a very conservative film.

Because the college campuses
they took this film to...

This was 1968
when the film was released,

The Gulf of Tonkin in
the Vietnam War had been 1964.

These were campuses where
there were student occupations,

where people wanted to talk about
the Vietnam War,

about conscription, about protest.

And actually, Benjamin is
an incredibly square guy.

He's always wearing
a shirt and tie.

He's always shaving.
There's no political opinions.

So initially the students'
response was,

"Where's the Vietnam War
in this film?"

And that seemed to be
a big problem.

"OK, so the studio
doesn't like it.

"The college kids don't like it.
Where is it gonna play?"

They started it in a few cinemas

and the audiences went crazy for it.

Maybe the producers
and studio executives

saw themselves in
the older Robinsons and Braddocks,

but that film caught fire.

Dustin Hoffman recalled
attending a preview in New York

and watching the film gather momentum
like a runaway train.

By the time his character is rushing
to the church,

the room was screaming.

He held back in the cinema,

terrified that he'd be recognised
as Benjamin.

One old lady did.

She turned out to be Radie Harris,
a gossip columnist,

and she pointed her cane at him

like one of Macbeth's witches
to prophesy

"Are you Dustin Hoffman?

"Are you The Graduate?

"Your life is never gonna
be the same again."

She was right.

We can say that
it really was probably

the first film to herald
what we call New Hollywood,

that new wave of filmmaking that came
in the late 1960s and 1970s.Yeah.

They probably
wouldn't have come in at all,

but for The Graduate,

because it was a success.

I mean, it changed
Hollywood's attitude completely.

They wondered, you know, "What?"

"Who is this young man,
whom we don't know,

"making a film with this young boy
who we don't know either?

There's a wonderful story about
Dustin Hoffman being in New York

after the film had come out

and peering out a window and seeing
these queues break the block.

Yes.

This great success,
everything he could have wanted,

and being even more worried now

that he was going to be noticed
everywhere.

Which is exactly how Benjamin
would've reacted to it.Yes.

Word got out.

The queues stretched
from block to block.

A young audience
went back again and again.

The film that had been rejected by
every studio in Hollywood

became the biggest hit of the year.

It has gone on to become one of the
most profitable films of all time.

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL: Mrs Robinson #

(DOG BARKS)

# SIMON & GARFUNKEL: Mrs Robinson #
# Stand up tall, Mrs Robinson

# God in Heaven
smiles on those who pray

# Hey, hey, hey #

(BRASS FANFARE PLAYS)

TV: "Mrs Lyndon B Johnson
comes to Williams College

"for an honorary degree.

"President John Sawyer
escorts the First Lady

to the ceremony at Chapin Hall.

"She took no formal notice of
a group of anti-war picketers

"who staged a silent vigil
protesting the Vietnam War.

"Some 75 student demonstrators
walked out of the auditorium where

"Mrs Johnson was given an honorary
Doctor of Humane Letters degree

"for her national
beautification program.

"Despite the demonstration,
the first lady is warmly applauded."

(APPLAUSE)

Do you think that Nichols
was attuned to America at that time?

I mean, he always claimed
it's not a Vietnam film

but there's a sense of something
terrible going on in the background,

such doom almost.
Yes.

Oh, he was definitely
a Liberal Democrat in other words.

He was someone who felt that America
had gone badly wrong somehow

and that the young people's
hopefulness had been betrayed.

This is really about that betrayal,

even though it comes out OK
in the end for Hoffman,

I think, doesn't it? (!)

Well, it's a fabulous last shot
on the bus, isn't it?

It's almost like a beat too long

and suddenly they're looking
in different directions,

and you think,
"Will they stay together?"

"Will this work out?"
You're left questioning at the end.

Yes. I suppose you are.

In Hoffman's star turn,

a new breed of leading man
was introduced to the world.

They no longer needed to resemble
Robert Redford or Paul Newman,

the Old Hollywood ideal
of the American Prince.

Now, they could look like Hoffman

or Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall
or Al Pacino.

This wasn't the Hollywood Dream.

This was American reality.

The film accelerated
and accelerated and accelerated,

and it became the box office smash
of that year.

At one point, the New Yorker devoted
26 pages of analysis to the film,

trying to understand
what its enormous appeal was.

It also changed the way Hollywood
thought about its audience.

They'd previously
not really understood

how to segment audiences
in quite the right way.

They'd played about with this a bit
in the 1950s with James Dean,

but they'd really tried to move back
into these musicals

and these big-budget action
pictures which were for everyone.

This was very much appealing to
a particular demographic;

these were kids who came and saw it
again and again and again.

There's this absolutely
fanatical devotion.

I mean, at one point
in Columbia college's occupation,

when the students were occupying
the buildings there,

every now and then
they would sneak out

so they could see The Graduate
at the local cinema,

and then come back in to carry
on with their political protests.

So it became the lifeblood
of the youth of the time,

even though in a strange way,
it's a 1950s movie.

Elaine!

Elaine!
Who is that guy? What's he doing?

Take care of him.
He's too late.

Elaine!

Elaine! Elaine!

Elaine!
(CROWD MUTTERS)

Elaine!
Make him stop.

Elaine!

Elaine! Elaine! Elaine!

Elaine!

Elaine! Elaine! Elaine!
(SHOUTING DROWNS OUT SPEECH)

Elaine!

Ben!!

The latter part of the film
is very, very condensed.

Suddenly you find that Mrs Robinson

has engineered for her daughter,
Elaine,

to marry this jock from
college called Carl.

They're in a very modern church
with a lot of glass,

of course, because there's glass
right all the way through this film.

Benjamin is racing to try and
stop the marriage,

and to declare his love,
and to rescue the damsel...

realising that he could actually
be too late.

And so... at that point,

Elaine looks around and...

there's this sort of
momentary indecision.

You think,
"Oh, my God, he's come for her."

And they basically run off together,

they jump on a bus
and go to the back of the bus.

It's a most spontaneous
sort of... reaction,

very highly improbable
I have to say,

but what's really incredible
about this is that...

if it had been a slightly
more conventional Hollywood movie...

..Benjamin would've rescued her
before she'd taken her vows.

In other words, she would've
hesitated before saying "I do."

Then the moment he would've got her,
they would've run off.

That's not the case.

Buck Henry had actually extended
Charles Webb's ending

so that
the couple had taken their vows,

and then he thought better of it
and retracted it.

But Mike Nichols said,
"No, no, we'll keep that."

I think that gives it
even more serious import,

which is what he wanted.

This is a Mike Nichols film,

and Mike Nichols is saying

this future for them
is desperately uncertain.

Mike Nichols
always resisted the idea

that the film was
explicitly political,

or that
it was about the generation gap,

which a lot of people said
when it came out.

He didn't love that either.

I mean, it's hard to say it's not
about some kind of generation gap

but I also don't know
if I think it's political

so much as social or spiritual
in a way.

But it is also about class,

and it is also about
the entitlement and arrogance

of the WASP upper middle class,

the expectation that the American
dream was theirs to grab.

It's about kicking back
against something,

even if it's not full of the
affectations of lifestyle,

like long hair or drugs
or overt anti-war sentiment.

Some people actually criticised
it for that at the time and said,

"If there was gonna be a film about
youth culture, then it should be
more explicit in what it's saying."

I don't think
it needed to ever be that.

I think what it does
is perfectly good on its own.

I think is something that...
For example,

there would be no Don Draper,
there would be no Mad Men

without a film like The Graduate
and what it touches upon.

He's being forced to take up
a life that isn't his from day one.

The whole thing about going into
plastics and all that.

And, you know...

Then he's floating in the pool,
drifting,

and you know that
he's not going to live that life.

And the music is the soundtrack to
that feeling, as much as anything.

That's why
the soundtrack is so clever

because it's more than
just a nice tune

to go along with it or to pace it,
you know? It's more than that.

It's actually capturing
the underlying thought really.

More than the tension, it's like the
underlying thought that he's having.

I think it captures the film
so perfectly,

but also it captured Simon and
Garfunkel at their absolute best.

Simon and Garfunkel
only had a short golden age.

It wasn't long before they stopped
getting on so well, let's say.

For that period when you've got
Art Garfunkel's pure voice,

which has got a playfulness to it,

and Paul Simon's
incredible writing skills

where he can just take a simple riff
on a guitar or a simple piano line

and build this really universal song
with a universal quality to it.

It only lasted
for a couple of years.

And I think The Graduate was the...

It was almost the perfect film,

and they were
the perfect band for it.

(SMOOTH PIANO MUSIC)

Hello, Benjamin.
Oh, hello.

Bancroft, I think became well-known
in Hollywood,

quite justly,
for that performance

because it was funny,

it was moving,

and it was absolutely right
for the part I think.

And there's a wonderful story
also that she was told by everybody,

her agent, all the people around her,

"Don't take this.
You're playing an older woman.

"This is the worst thing
you could possibly do.

The one person who said,
"This is a great script"

was her husband, Mel Brooks.
Was it? I didn't know that.

He went
"This was a good script.

"This is very funny.
You should do this."

It's very amazing because Buck Henry
hadn't done much before.No.

He wasn't really a scriptwriter.

I think it's Nichol's almost
improvisational instinct, isn't it?

That he just had the right idea

and between them, they could play off
each other as writer and director.

Yes, it's true.

The Graduate would be
nominated for seven Oscars,

with Mike Nichols
the only winner on the night.

But alongside fellow nominee
Bonnie and Clyde,

it'll be at the vanguard
of New Hollywood,

vivid and vibrant new directors
with radical material.

Film had something to say.

In June 1968,

with Simon and Garfunkel
at number one with Mrs Robinson,

Robert Kennedy was assassinated in
the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel,

where they had filmed scenes
of Benjamin and Mrs Robinson

meeting for their affair.

Vietnam had begun.

And in that famous last shot
of the film...

where Benjamin and Elaine
are on the back of the bus...

there is just a hint
of something else going on.

We are left to wonder,
"Is this a happy ending?"

They are gazing
in different directions.

What will become of them?

# And the vision
that was planted in my brain

# still remains

# within the sound of silence.

# In restless dreams,
I walked alone...

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