"The Graduate" at 50

This past Sunday evening, we attended the TCM/Fathom Events theatrical showing of Mike Nichols' 1967 masterpiece, "The Graduate".  The movie is getting this special Big Screen showing to mark the Fiftieth (can you believe it?) Anniversary of its release.

Before I talk about seeing it again, a little background as to why this movie is so important to me.  

Back in the spring of 1968, my junior year in high school, I took my first paying job:  a movie usher at the beautiful Forum Theatre in Squirrel Hill.  Movies were distributed differently back then.  A movie would be released and would play on ONE screen in an area, it would run its course as a first run movie, and then get a wider release in secondary "neighborhood theaters".  The Forum was one of those theaters that would get first run releases, and it was fortunate to be given "The Graduate" to exhibit in Pittsburgh.  When I started at the Forum, "The Graduate" was already an established hit, and had been playing at the Forum for almost two months.  It would not leave The Forum until it had run for a total of six months.  I never tired of watching this movie, usually in bits an pieces, during a usual work shift.  I loved it, and when I say that I have seen this movie, literally, hundreds of times, trust me, that is a proper use of the word "literally".  Naturally, I own a DVD of this movie, which I pull out and watch every year or so, and I will tune it in when it shows up on TCM.  However, I had not seen it in a movie theater, on a big screen, for almost fifty years, until this past Sunday night.  

"The Graduate" is rightly praised as a seminal movie of the 1960's with it's depiction of youth alienation and the need of that generation to shed the constrictions and expectations of older generations.  There were many such movies made during that time period with similar themes.  Most of them do not hold up well when viewed forty and fifty years later (most prominent example: "Easy Rider".  An important and heavy movie in 1969; almost unwatchable in 2017).  Not so "The Graduate".  Still entertaining, funny, and relevant today, fifty years after it was released.

Why is that?  Good movies start with the writing, I believe, and screenwriters Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (who also played the desk clerk) produced a great script, including perhaps the movie's most memorable line:

"Plastics."

Mike Nichols was already an award winning stage director, but he had only directed one movie before "The Graduate".  He would win an Oscar for this one.  He would go on to direct a total of twenty feature films, most of them good to very good, but "The Graduate" was to be his best.

Then there was the acting.  These were the first major roles for Dustin Hoffman as Ben Braddock and Katherine Ross as Elaine Robinson.

For Hoffman, it was a breakout role that would lead to a long, distinguished, two Oscar career that is still going on.  For Miss Ross, it led to a role in another classic, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".  She may never have been the star that Hoffman was to become, but to be a part of those two films, well, that is a damn nice resume.

And then there was Anne Bancroft.  She was already an Oscar winner when cast as the predatory Mrs. Robinson.

The next time you watch this movie, pay attention to Anne Bancroft's face, particularly, her eyes.  It is one of the more brilliant pieces of acting that you will ever see.

Of course, when discussing "The Graduate" you have to mention the music of Paul Simon as sung by Simon and Garfunkel.  Another piece of the movie-making puzzle that produced a brilliant movie when it was all put together.

And just to prove that no matter how many times you've seen a movie, you can still pick up something different or something that you may have missed before.  In this showing, that moment for me was the last spoken bit of dialog of the movie.  It's the scene in the church, right after Elaine's wedding, when she is about to leave her groom at the altar and run off with Ben.  Her mother, grabs her right before Ben does....

Mrs. Robinson: Elaine, it's too late.

Elaine: Not for me!

That scene, that bit of dialog, sums up the movie, and maybe the feelings of an entire generation.

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As great as it was, "The Graduate" won only one Oscar, the one for Mike Nichols as Director.

It lost out for Best Picture to "In The Heat of the Night" another great movie that is still great, fifty years later.  The other nominees that year? "Bonnie and Clyde", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and "Dr, Doolittle".  Fifty years later, only "Dr. Doolittle" appears to not belong among some pretty elite company.

Hoffman would go on to win two Oscars in the years ahead, but that year he lost out to Rod Steiger.  The other nominees that year were Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, and Spencer Tracy.  All five of those guys either had already or would go on to win Academy Awards.

Anne Bancroft lost out to Katherine Hepburn that year for Best Actress, a category that also included Faye Dunaway, Dame Edith Evans, and Audrey Hepburn that year.

Katherine Ross Lost out as Best Supporting Actress to Estelle Parsons of "Bonnie and Clyde".

Turns out that 1967 was quite a year for movies!

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It is always fun to consider alternative history in such matters.  Also seriously considered for the main roles played by Bancroft, Hoffman, and Ross in "The Graduate" were these three:

Doris Day, Robert Redford, Candice Bergen

Of course, Hoffman, Bancroft, and Ross proved to be perfect in their roles, so it is almost unimaginable to picture anyone else as Ben Braddock, Mrs. Robinson, and Elaine Robinson.   Would it have been as good a movie with any or all of the either Day, Redford, or Bergen cast in it?  Maybe, maybe not, but the idea of Doris Day, by then typecast as the virginal heroine of romantic comedies of the era has always intrigued me.  Could she have pulled it off, and would the movie going public have ever accepted her in such a role?  We'll never know.

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Let us end this post as the movie ended.  Wonder what became of Ben and Elaine at the end of that bus ride?

Worst Movie Ever? "The Swarm" Is In The Discussion

I noticed that TCM was showing this 1978 movie, "The Swarm", in the wee small hours of the morning one day last week so I set the DVR for it.  I had never seen it and was unfamiliar with it, but what drew me toward it was the fact that Katherine Ross was one of the co-stars.  Having just seen her in "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid", I wanted to see her in this one.

"The Swarm" was a 1970's era "disaster movie" produced and directed by the master of the genre, Irwin Allen.  Well, it certainly was a disaster!  It may have actually been the death knell for these types of movies. It had the proverbial all-star cast, and the description of the movie in the TCM program guide should have been the tip-off to what was to come: "A scientist and a military doctor try to save the city of Houston from a swarm of killer bees."  I'm not making that up.

Well, I started watching it, and it was worse than watching a traffic accident - although the movie did indeed have several car wrecks AND a train wreck.   The acting was so bad that it reminded me of those sketches that Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman used to do when they were actually trying to be bad.  And the dialog, was absolutely indescribable.  Here a couple of examples:

Brad Crane (played by Michael Caine): We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for fifteen years, but I never thought I'd see the final face-off in my lifetime. And I never dreamed, that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend.


Or this one:

Brad Crane: These bees, General, are of joint concern, and they are killing Americans, without reference as to whether or not they have a serial number and are expected to salute YOU! So there will be no air drops of any kind until I give the OK! 

General Slater (played by Richard Widmark): Your OK, huh? Then just possible I can persuade you to attack this particular swarm, now that we know where it is! Attack and eliminate it! 

Brad Crane: Possibly, if you can explain to me, how you air drop chemicals, without killing the native insect life! If your chemical will kill the African bee, it will also kill the American bee, right? 

General Slater: Right! And better a few American bees than a lot of AMERICAN PEOPLE! 

Brad Crane: That is the point, general! The honey bee is vital to the environment! Every year in America, they pollinate six billion dollars worth of crops! If you kill the bee, you're gonna kill the crop! If you kill the plants, you'll kill the people! No! No, general! There will be no air drop, until we know exactly, what we are dropping, and where, and how! Excuse me! 

[Crane storms off]

And here's one more....

Dr. Andrews (Jose Ferrar): Billions of dollars have been spent to make these nuclear plants safe. Fail-safe! The odds against anything going wrong are astronomical, Doctor! 

Dr. Hubbard (Richard Chamberlain): I appreciate that, Doctor. But let me ask you. In all your fail-safe techniques, is there a provision for an attack by killer bees?

I could go on and on, but you get the idea, and the entire script is just full of passages like this from start to finish.  The screenplay, by the way was written by Stirling Silliphant, a highly regarded writer who won an Oscar for his screenplay of "In the Heat of the Night".  One review I read said that it seemed that Silliphant must have been writing it like this on purpose for some reason or another, but, hey, art is one thing, but a payday is a payday.

And how about that All-Star Cast?  Here are some of the names:  Michael Caine, Katherine Ross, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Richard Chamberlain, Patty Duke, Fred MacMurray.  By my count, there are six Oscars scattered on the mantelpieces among these various actors, but they were in this one for the money only, that's for sure.  Another review that I read said that Caine was "so obviously contemptuous of the material that he refused to change his expression" for the entire movie.  I honestly don't know how Caine, Ross, and Widmark kept straight faces while acting in this one.  I guess that's what makes them good actors.

I once read an article by the late Pittsburgh Post-Gazette movie critic George Anderson where he interviewed Michael Caine and started a question with "You've made an awful lot of movies..." whereupon Caine interrupted him and laughingly said "I think you mean to say that 'You've made a lot of awful movies'."  Good line, and while Caine is a terrific actor (two Oscars), he's also famous for taking anything ("Jaws 3" being the example always cited) that will get him a paycheck.  "The Swarm" has to be Exhibit A for these peculiar, but no doubt enriching, career choices.

Some movies fall into the "so-bad-it's-good" category and become Camp Classics, but this one goes beyond that.  In his Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin rates this as a BOMB, and says it's "for masochists only."  That about sums it up.

If you ever want to see an example of a really, really BAD movie, you can check this one out, but don't say that I didn't warn you.