Word: benjamin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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More often than not, the camerawork reveals Nichols' ineptitude at choosing the right solution to filming a given scene: Benjamin's first exploration of the hotel room, opening doors and switching-on lights, is filmed in tight close-up, losing the potential of the quickly varying lighting effects, and inadvertantly showing us less of Benjamin's emotions than we would see were the camera ten feet further away (a similar scene is done to perfection in Truffaut's Soft Skin); a scene shot through a diving mask and one with six frame inserts of Mrs. Robinson's naked body...
...lack of direction in Elaine's characterization points up similar flaws and inconsistencies in The Graduate. Nichols' conception of Benjamin turns him into a high school sophomore. His confrontation with a hotel desk clerk reveals a fear and naivete inconceivable in a 21-year-old; and if we accept his high school gaucheness and inability to cope, we certainly can't accept his knowledgeable cool in the toughest strip joint on Sunset Boulevard, or his heroic initiative in wooing Elaine toward...
Equally inconsistent, Nicholas goes to 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...
Combining this with the truly sloppy stereotyping of Benjamin's parents and Elaine's law-school suitor, The Graduate doesn't hold water dramatically or structurally, and ultimately says nothing. Nichols' satire of the uppermiddle class establishment dates back 15 years, and has the impact of a butter knife. A thematic cop-out, The Graduate's simplistic affirmation of love, honesty, and individual liberation provide the cold comfort of a second-rate Aesop fable...
...enough knowledge of craft to successfully execute them. For Nichols, each cut becomes a major problem of how to move from one shot to the next, a question of alternatives and careful choice: a zoo scene ends dismally on coy shots of monkeys; a zoom pull-back of Benjamin waiting on campus for Elaine is effective until we realize that Nichols has included it in order to effect a trick dissolve transition to the next scene; unable to end a breakfast scene legitimately, Nichols covers it with an easy laugh by cutting on the carefully timed popping...