Appraising the Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood

ISBN-13: 9780786463060 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 221 str.

J. W. Whitehead

Opis

The popular success in 1967 of The Graduate was immediate and total; at the time, only Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music were bigger box-office winners. Yet such phenomenal success came at a price: On the film's 40th anniversary, director Mike Nichols claimed that The Graduate had been "whipped away" by a young audience hungry for countercultural documents. This study, the first monograph on The Graduate, explores how popular and subsequent critical reception deflected a full understanding of the film's complex point of view, which satirizes everything in its path--especially Benjamin and Elaine, its young "heroes." The text explores how the film offers not the happy ending some imagine, but a corrosive and satirical vision of humanity. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Spis treści

• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part I. Introduction
• 1. "Plastics"
• 2. Post-­Graduate
• 3. The Graduates
• Part II. Seeing The Graduate
• 4. "The Sounds of Silence": Of Human Baggage (00:00–03:00)
• 5. The Graduation Party (03:00–06:30)
• 6. The Locked Womb (06:30–16:30)
• 7. "Ben? You'll Never Be Young Again." (16:30–21:00)
• 8. The Birthday Party (21:00–24:00)
• 9. An "Affair" at the Taft Hotel (24:00–38:00)
• 10. "Drifting" (38:00–46:00)
• 11. "Conversation"-Stopper (46:00–55:00)
• 12. Elaine (55:00–1:10:30)
• 13. "Scarborough Fair": The Berkeley Stalker (1:10:30–1:26:00)
• 14. "Mrs. Robinson": The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1:26:00–1:41:00)
• 15. More "Sounds of Silence": The Finishing Kick (1:41:00–1:46:00)
• Part III. Valediction
• 16. The Legacy of The Graduate
• Chapter Notes
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index