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

Front Cover
McFarland, Jan 10, 2014 - Performing Arts - 221 pages

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.

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Selected pages

Contents

Preface
1
Introduction
13
Seeing The Graduate
67
Valediction
169
Chapter Notes
195
Filmography
201
Bibliography
203
Index
207
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Appraising The Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood
J.W. Whitehead
No preview available - 2010

Common terms and phrases

adult alienation ambiguous audience audience’s become Ben’s Benjamin and Elaine Benjamin Braddock Benjamin’s point Berkeley box-office Buck Henry camera Carl Smith Carringer character character’s Charles Webb cinematic close-up comic conversation counter-cultural culture dark depiction despite Directed director door Dustin Hoffman Elaine’s fantasy Farber and Changas father film’s film’s ending filmmakers final future Gelmis Graduate’s graduation party Harris Henry’s Hollywood ironic Jacob Brackman jamin Jenny Kashner Linda Ruth Williams look man’s Max’s McCleery Mike Nichols montage montage sequence mother movie narrative never Nichols and O’Steen Nichols’s film night off-screen ofits ofview parents passive plastic play point of view pool production protagonist rhetoric Richard Corliss Richard Sylbert Robert Robinson Rushmore Sam Mendes satire says scene screenplay sense sequence sexual shot of Benjamin Simon Simon and Garfunkel social Sounds of Silence soundtrack Surtees Taft Hotel Turman vision visual Webb’s novel What’s young

About the author (2014)

J.W. Whitehead directs the fine arts and honors programs at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he teaches film, creative writing, and contemporary literature.

Bibliographic information

TitleAppraising The Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood
Appraising The Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood, J. W. Whitehead
AuthorJ.W. Whitehead
Editionillustrated
PublisherMcFarland, 2014
ISBN0786484810, 9780786484812
Length221 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Literary Criticism / General
Performing Arts / Film / General
  
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