 Great movie, needs a better DVD |
| Review Date: April 20, 2003 |
| Reviewer: FairiesWearBoots8272, USA |
| The Graduate is a great film and I grow to love it more with each viewing. Everything is nearly perfect about it. The script, Mike Nichols' direction, the performances of Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katherine Ross, the music of Simon and Garfunkel. It's funny yet dramatic, moving and profound all at the same time. A very enjoyable film all around. Dustin Hoffman has rarely been better than in The Graduate, although he has certainly given many other fine performances (Midnight Cowboy, Rain Man, Kramer Vs. Kramer). However, even more than those pictures, Hoffman will always be remembered for The Graduate and his portrayal of an awkward young man trying to get a hold on his life. Also worth noting in particular is the direction of Mike Nichols. He truly gives the film a unique visual style to make it an experience rather than just a comedy/drama. Note the opening credits with Hoffman on an airport moving sidewalk set to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence". Nichols' uses cuts very interestingly in several scenes such as the scene where Benjamin jumps up on his raft in the pool, and lands in bed with Mrs. Robinson. He also uses zooms to great effect throughout the film. Nichols' Best Director Oscar for this film was well-deserved. I think that Hoffman's performance should have won also, as well as the screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. One other thing that I must mention is that The Graduate absolutely must been seen in its original aspect ratio! If you're not watching a widescreen version, then you're not watching The Graduate. The film was shot in the Panavision process with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Mike Nichols makes wonderful use of the 2.35:1 frame, so the film will be absolutely botched in pan and scan. If you watch The Graduate in full-screen pan and scan, you're really, really missing out. The visual impact of the film will be irreparably damaged. The DVD is adequate, but this film deserves much better. The disc is labeled a special edition, but it's really too skimpy to be that. At very least you're getting a widescreen version of the film. However, the transfer is not enhanced for 16:9 televisions. What we need is a fully remastered 16:9 transfer which would be immensely beneficial. The picture quality is fair, but could be so much better. It's really stunning what difference a brand new remastered 16:9 transfer can make for an older film like this. Just look at the new DVD of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The film also deserves better supplemental materials. A better documentary and a commentary by the filmmakers would be great. A seperate commentary by Dustin Hoffman would be even better. I'm convinced that someday The Graduate will receive a worthy DVD edition, and I will wait until then to purchase it. |
The Landmark Film - Done RIGHT!!!
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| Review Date: August 31, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Steven I. Ramm, Phila, PA USA |
The previous reviews posted here are all based on what the reviewers HOPED would be on the new 40th Anniversary and raised some questions. I can answer most of the concerns having watched the DVD this week.
As for how important this film is, let's just say it defined a generation in the 1970s. And nearly anyone in either high school or college (or a recent "graduate" entering the working world) when the film was released can quote verbatim important lines and whole scenes. Try "Are you trying to seduce me Mrs. Robinson?" or even the mention of one word ""Plastics!". I have only watched the film (on VHS) once since my original viewing on the big screen forty years ago. Of course I remember many of the great moments (the finale at the church, for one) and the Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack. (Dave Grusin wrote the incidental music.). I did not see the "25th Anniversary" reissue. So much of the supplemental material was new to me.
First off the transfer is great! It must have been remastered. And yes, it's in Wide Screen. It HAS to be. The hardest video to pan and scan was always this film as Director Mike Nichols spaced his characters at the far sides of the screen. I watched this on an 25 year old 26 in TV and it was still perfect.
Okay, now the bonus features. It's a 2 "disc" set because one disc is a CD of FOUR songs from the film. So it's really more of a CD single.", That's fine with me, but most of us have the music in our collection.
There are TWO commentary tracks: One is Hoffman and Ross talking. Since Ross doesn't even appear in the film until almost half way through, she has little to say for a while. And there are long periods where Hoffman says nothing so you get to hear the soundtrack dialogue at that point. The second commentary is with Director Mike Nichols and Director Stephen Soderburgh. It more that SS is interviewing Nichols. And Nichols is very outgoing here. Where I found a small problem is that the conversation often does not match what is on the screen. During the "Seduction" scene I expected to hear details about the set up. But Nichols was talking about Screen Tests or something else. I have not made it all the way through the commentaries. Too much other good stuff here.
There is a NEW 25-minute documentary: "Students of the Graduate" which has interviews with young directors who learned techniques from Nichols direction. The Directors of "Little Miss Sunshine" were ones I remember. It's interesting. There is a short 8-minute one on "the Seduction" as well. This appears to be new.
The other featurettes are from the 25th Anniversary release. One is obvious as it's title is "The Graduate at 25". You can see from the excerpted scenes how poor the 25th Anniversary print was. And - what I found MOST interesting was a "One on One" featurette with Dustin Hoffman which runs 22 minutes. It was recorded for the 25th - similar comments appear in the "Graduate at 25" feature - but Hoffman tells GREAT stories and I was on the floor laughing!
ONE of the tywo screen tests that Ross did - with Charles Grodin - is included in the "at 25" featurette but the announced "two screen tests with introduction" are not on the final DVD. NEITHER is the "Coming of Age: The Making of the Graduate" one.
So there is lots to watch here and moments to remember. I, for one, loved this set and the special featurettes - which rarely, though sometimes, repeat themselves - briefing out things you missed and make you want to playback some scenes.
This should be a hot release for September!
Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
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Ouch.
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| Review Date: September 13, 1999 |
| Reviewer: , |
| I just saw this movie at age 31 after not having seen it since age 14. My perspective shift is amazing. When I saw this film 17 years ago, Mrs. Robinson was a villainess of the highest order. Now, I understand her. Just when she has something in her life making her feel young and vibrant again, she loses it to her daughter. Ouch. This is such a smart script, brilliantly directed with sharp performances, especially from Bancroft. It's totally devoid of sentiment, which I admire (you can keep your "Gone with the Winds" and "Titanics"), and merciless to all its characters. The final moment when Hoffman's and Ross's faces go blank as they ponder "Now what?" is chilling. This is my favorite film of all time. |
Still a Funny, Perceptive Classic Forty Years Later and in a DVD Package Worthy of Its Reputation
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| Review Date: September 13, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Ed Uyeshima, San Francisco, CA USA |
If there is one film deserving of a full-blown renaissance, it is this seminal 1967 social alienation comedy, and this 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition DVD presents an especially pristine print, as well as several extras that will please die-hard fans. Based on the wry 1963 Charles Webb novel, the film itself holds a special affection among its original audience even now, the aging Vietnam War-era population who championed anarchy and the people who revise their personal histories, so they can think they were members of the now-fashionable counter-cultural movement. At the same time, it has a timeless quality for new generations simply because it's a consistently witty, observant piece of cinema targeted to anyone who has experienced that sense of post-academic confusion when the responsibilities of real life inevitably intrude.
This is an accomplished film for someone directing only his second film. But then again, judging from his subsequent work all the way to Angels in America and Closer, Mike Nichols seems to have come into filmmaking fully understanding the frailties of the human condition and knowing how to convey them in a way that audiences could empathize. It is a testament to Nichols and screenwriters Buck Henry and Calder Willingham that the social comedy aspects of this film do not seem at all dated. In fact, despite its provocative veneer, it's really old-fashioned in key ways from the protagonist's moralistic tendencies to his romantically compulsive motivations toward the end. Dustin Hoffman was pulled out of complete obscurity to play Benjamin, the alienated, recent college graduate drifting amid his parents' Southern California upper-middle class, swimming pool-centered ennui.
As Benjamin figures out what to do with his life and faces unwanted advice from his parents' friends, enter Mrs. Robinson, a bored, restless wife, a self-proclaimed alcoholic and about as sympathetic as Lady Macbeth. It's hard to imagine what the original choice, Doris Day, would have done with this role, as it takes Anne Bancroft's formidable arsenal of skills to bring this vituperative woman to life. She gives a masterful performance. The hotel sequence where Benjamin awkwardly asks Mrs. Robinson for a drink is shrewdly observed and downright hilarious - the suspicious hotel clerk (Henry, the film's co-screenwriter) eyeing Benjamin's every move; the reception line which Benjamin pretends to know (TV veterans Alice Ghostley and Marion Lorne, Esmeralda and Aunt Clara from Bewitched, make indelible marks here); and the predatory Mrs. Robinson's business-like approach to seduction.
Complicating matters exorbitantly is Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine, played with relative nonchalance by Katharine Ross. The film then turns into a revenge comedy with Mrs. Robinson trying to prevent the inevitable coupling of Benjamin and Elaine. She almost succeeds but not before a series of revelations and dramatic encounters that lead to the classic ending aboard the public bus. Some of the comedy and characterizations seem a bit extreme, for example, Hoffman seems to amplify his character's nebbishness a few too many times, and Elaine's fiancée appears like a textbook 1960's TV stereotype. There are also a few forgivable geographic gaffes - most of the campus scenes are not filmed at Berkeley as portrayed in the film but at USC, and Benjamin crosses the Bay Bridge in the wrong direction to hunt for Elaine.
The 2007 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition DVD contains two separate commentary tracks, both insightful but for different reasons - the first is an anecdotal remembrance with Hoffman and Ross quite engaged with details of the filming (Hoffman apparently had quite a crush on Ross and still does), and the second has Nichols and director Steven Soderbergh discussing all aspects of the production from casting to camera set-ups within specific scenes. The main featurette is the new 25-minute "Students of `The Graduate'", which amounts to an extended appreciation of the film from Henry; producer Lawrence Turman; two film scholars; various directors (Harold Ramis, Marc Forster, Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton, David O. Russell); and film critics (Newsweek's David Ansen, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman). The second new short, "The Seduction", is a nine-minute retrospective look at the famous scene where Mrs. Robinson nonchalantly pounces on Benjamin. The participants from the first featurette are involved here as well, and it provides a good dissection of not only the scene but the sexual mores prevalent at the time of filming.
There are two holdovers from the 1999 DVD release. The first is the 22-minute "'The Graduate' at 25" produced in 1992 for the laserdisc release. It has the advantage of participation from Hoffman and Ross but otherwise echoes the information presented in the newer retrospective featurette. The second is a 22-minute interview with Hoffman done in quick takes. He lends invaluable and often amusing insight into his selection for the role and the filmmaking experience. He also talks about the proposed sequel which one can assume eventually turned into 2005's execrable Rumor Has It.... Beyond the original theatrical trailer, the DVD contains a print of the film that makes it look as good as it did in its original release. There is a bonus soundtrack sampler CD with four of the distinctive Simon and Garfunkel songs featured in the movie - "The Sound of Silence", "Scarborough Fair/Canticle", "April Come She Will", and of course, "Mrs. Robinson". Lastly, there is a helpful six-page booklet that fills in the rest of the blanks on the production. This is a great package for a classic film. |
Farewell To A Great Actress
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| Review Date: June 7, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Kevin Killian, San Francisco, CA United States |
Today the news came we were dreading to hear but which we knew was coming, that our wonderful Anne Bancroft has died, at age 73. It is said that she came to resent the way she was remembered by the mass public only for her role in THE GRADUATE, bemoaning the fact that even her best screen work (playing Annie Sullivan in Arthur Penn's film of THE MIRACLE WORKER, for which she won the Oscar) was in its shadow. Any real fan of Anne Bancroft can remember dozens of great performances she gave us over the fifty years she spent in show business, all the way from screaming her lungs out in GORILLA AT LARGE to her suicidal existentialist in THE SLENDER THREAD with Sidney Poitier as the psychiatrist who tries to help her.
Everyone knows that she was not the first choice to play Mrs Robinson and that Mike Nichols lobbied hard to persuade Doris Day to take the part. Similarly, she only wound up playing the lead in John Ford's "Eastern" SEVEN WOMEN (his last narrative film) when Patricia Neal had her terrible stroke. Bancroft was gallant, reliable, game for anything, and she was also extremely magnetic. The other day we were watching THE TURNING POINT, Herbert Ross' ballet movie-slash-continual catfight, which cast her opposite the reoubtable Shirley MacLaine. No disrespect to Miss MacLaine, but when Bancroft is on the screen, as the aging prima donna Emma Jacklin, there's no way you can take your eyes off of her.
She was memorable also in AGNES OF GOD, with Margaux Hemingway in LIPSTICK, and booklovers everywhere identified with her Helene Hanff, the American woman with a thing for London bookstores and the men who staff them, in 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD opposite Anthony Hopkins.
No matter what the part, big or small, Bancroft was always amazing, and always classy, and that's what made her such a good screen partner (and life partner) to the unapologetically vulgar Mel Brooks. Together they formed a Hollywood relationship unlike all the others. We mourn her death and extend our condolences to him and to their family. Tonight we will look up towards the heavens and we'll see a new star burning in the sky with a fierce intensity. Goodnight, Anne Bancroft, shine on, shine on. |
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February 5th, 2010
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