Word: bancrofts
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...GRADUATE. Neither Director Mike Nichols, nor a fine cast (Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross), can rescue this collegiate comedy of amours from a sophomore slump...
Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) returns home a college graduate without plans for the future; he spends a few weeks stifling in suburbia, then begins an affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father's business partner. Forced by his parents to date the Robinson daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross) in deference to social amenities, Benjamin initially antagonizes the girl as per Mrs. Robinson's instructions, then falls in love with...
...pains to humanize Mrs. Robinson in the single-take hotel scene where Benjamin insists on talk before sex, then allows her to become a stock villainess who appears in the last hour for five minutes to serve an archetypal function as Dracula's daughter. Sensing the glaring omission of Bancroft, Nichols instructs Simon and Garfunkle to put her name in a song insert, a gratuitous gesture matched only by her one-line appearance at the wedding finale...
Some good acting gets lost in Nichols' vain attempt to prove himself a purveyor of cinematic pizazz. Bancroft and Hoffman are more capable than the script or direction allows them to demonstrate: Bancroft disappears altogether, and Hoffman is forced into too many blankfaced ambiguous close-ups. Katherine Ross's perfect pre-Raphaelite beauty overshadows her valiant attempt to create something from nothing, an attempt which almost succeeds (as if it matters whether anyone so gorgeous can act). The Graduate's best performance comes from Murray Hamilton as cuckolded Mr. Robinson, an all-too-tangential figure in the proceedings...
...title role, Hoffman is an original, likable actor whose bag of monumeital insecurities marks the truly assured comedian. As the vamp, Anne Bancroft is appropriately sly and predatory, and Katharine Ross, as her daughter, possesses one of the freshest new faces in Hollywood. But the screenplay, which begins as genuine comedy, soon degenerates into spurious melodrama. Moreover, Director Nichols, perhaps affected by his stage experience, has given much of the film the closed-in air of a studio set. Like Nichols himself, The Graduate appears to be a victim of the sophomore jinx...