Stubs – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis. Directed by Mike Nichols. Screenplay by Ernest Lehman. Based on the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, produced on the stage by Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder (New York, 13 Oct 1962). Produced by Ernest Lehman. USA Black and White 130 minutes Drama

My DVR was getting quite low on room, so I decided to go back and watch the oldest film that I had recorded to clear up space. For over two years, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has been waiting patiently to be watched. Finally on a recent Friday night, we got to it. And after finally watching it, I feel bad about having made it wait so long.

One of the landmark films of the mid-sixties, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is based on Edward Albee’s play, which opened four years previously. At the time, the language used in the play assaulted its audiences and it was considered to be unfilm-able by Hollywood, which had that out-of-date Production Code, which forbade much of the play’s language and subject matter. But, as Bob Dylan had already sung, the time’s they are a-changing.

The play was purchased by Warner Bros. and gave it to screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who also acted as the film’s producer. Lehman made the decision not to change any of the play’s dialogue and despite grumblings for the Catholic Legion of Decency, the MPAA and even Warner Bros., Lehman would prevail.

Originally, Bette Davis and James Mason were considered for the leads. If you’ve seen the film, you can only imagine the delight in seeing Davis do an impersonation of herself from the film Beyond the Forest (1949), in which she had exclaimed the famous line “What a dump!” which is referred to in the play and the film. But sober heads prevailed. Elizabeth Taylor and her then current husband, Richard Burton, whom she had met on the set of Cleopatra (1963), were case in the leads.

Taylor, who had grown up on camera in such films as Lassie Come Home (1943), National Velvet (1944) and Father of the Bride (1950), was considered one of the world’s most beautiful women at the time and about 10 years younger than the Martha character in the play. But Taylor, who had already been nominated four times for an Academy Award for her acting in Raintree County (1957), Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and finally winning for Butterfield 8 (1960), had already proven herself to be more than just a pretty face.

Richard Burton was a well-known actor in his own right. Six years older than Taylor, Burton had spent time on stage before getting into the movies with The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949). The Welsh-born actor had also been nominated for his acting, first as a Supporting Actor in My Cousin Rachel (1952), then as Best Actor in The Robe (1953), Becket (1964) and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965).

Like the play, the film had only four credited parts. Rounding out the cast were George Segal, a relative newcomer to film, having only started with 1961’s The Young Doctors and Sandy Dennis, making only her second film after having acted on the Guiding Light soap opera on television.

Virginia Woolf, the well-known writer, modernist and feminist in the early 1900s, mentioned in the title, really has no role in the film other than her name is used in song. Sung to the tune of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", instead of the Disney song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” which it references, Virginia Woolf’s name is used instead of the Big Bad Wolf.  Albee described the inspiration for the title:

I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke.

At the beginning of the story, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and her husband George
(Richard  Burton) are waiting for their guests to arrive.

The story is set on the campus of an unnamed small New England college. It is two in the morning and associate history professor George (Richard Burton) and his hard-drinking wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), the daughter of the college president, have just arrived home from a party. As soon as they're home, Martha informs George that she’s invited a young married couple, whom she met at the party, for a drink. George isn’t in the mood for company and Martha teases him about a song that was sung at the party that got a lot of laughs, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” George is not amused.

Nick (George Segal), the new biology professor, and his wife,
Honey (Sandy Dennis), come over for drinks. And drinking they will do.

The guests, Nick (George Segal), a biology professor (even though Martha thinks he teaches math), and his wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis) arrive and the four start to drink. They will not be too far from a bottle of liquor for the rest of the movie.  Martha and George engage what appears to be their usual scathing verbal abuse and while Nick and Honey are at first embarrassed, they still stay.

Early on the two couples share a laugh,

The wives go into the kitchen and when they return, Honey tells everyone that Martha has told her about her and George's son and that the next day, Sunday, will be his sixteenth birthday. George is visibly angry and upset that Martha has told her their shared secret.

Martha continues to taunt George and his response is passive aggressive. Martha tells Nick and Honey how much of a failure George is, considering that he married the college president’s daughter, he should be more than an only an associate professor. A humiliated George reacts violently by breaking an empty liquor bottle. In order to screen Martha out, George grabs Honey and starts to dance, singing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Too much giggling on top of too much alcohol sends Honey running to the bathroom to throw up.

Martha taunts George until he smashes a bottle in humiliation,

After tending to Honey, Martha goes to the kitchen to make coffee. Meanwhile, George goes outside and Nick follows him. Like a lot of husbands, the two complain about their marriages and their wives. Nick confesses to George that he only married Honey because she thought she was pregnant, what is referred to as a hysterical pregnancy. George mentions that Martha has never had any pregnancies before going on to complain about his marriage as a series of accommodations.

Nick follows George outside and the two talk and open up.

Sort of out of the blue, George tells the story of a boy he once knew at prep school. The boy had supposedly killed his mother accidentally when he was younger and had joined George and other boys on a pre-holiday drinking binge. George goes on to describe the laughter around the boy ordering “Bergen” instead of bourbon or gin. When Nick asks what happens to the kid, George hesitates, but then tells him how the boy, then sixteen and with a learner’s permit, swerved to avoid a porcupine and hit a tree, killing his father, who was a passenger. The boy, upon learning the news, went insane and has been 30 years in a mental hospital.

Nick goes on to tell George about Honey’s father’s money and how he jokingly plans to move up at the University by sleeping with the wives of the prominent professors and administrators. He even suggests starting with George’s Martha.

Martha comes out of the house and yells across the yard that they’re making coffee and the boys go inside. But instead of coffee, Nick and Honey want to go home. George, even though he’s been drinking, insists on driving them home.

In the car, the talk once again turns to George and Martha’s son, which further annoys George. On the way, they pass a still open roadhouse and Honey suggests they stop to dance. At this hour, they are the only patrons. Honey dances wildly while Nick tries to calm her down. Honey and George watch as Martha and then Martha and Nick dance suggestively. Fed up, George unplugs the jukebox and announces the game is over. Martha alludes to the fact George may have murdered his parents like the protagonist in his unpublished, non-fiction novel, as well as his Bergen-ordering friend from his earlier story. George can only be pushed so far and he starts to strangle Martha until Nick manages to pull him off.

At the roadhouse, Nick stops George from strangling Martha.

The owner of the roadhouse (Frank Flanagan) tries to kick them out, but George convinces him to serve them one more round before closing. The owner's wife (Agnes Flanagan) brings them drinks. Soon after George proclaims that he's through playing "Humiliate the Host" and announces the four are going to play a new game, "Get the Guests".

Still at the roadhouse, George invents a new game, "Get the Guests."

George then tells the group that in addition to his one unpublished novel, he’s written a second novel and the story he tells, about a young couple from the Midwest, which closely mirrors everything Nick had told him in confidence about the marriage and the hysterical pregnancy. Honey recognizes their story and their secrets and runs from the room. Before Nick goes after her, he promises to get revenge on George.

In the parking lot, George tells Martha that he cannot stand the way she constantly humiliates him, and she suggests that he married her for that very reason. Supposedly fed up they declare "total war." George is still surprised when Martha drives off without him. He watches as she stops to pick up Nick and Honey and then drives off. George resigns himself to walking back home.

Martha argues with George in the parking lot before driving off with Nick and Honey.

Arriving, he finds their station wagon sitting run up on the curb. In the backseat, he finds a half-conscious Honey lying across the backseat. In the second story bedroom window, George sees the outline of his wife and Nick, suggesting they are presently engaged in sex. George overhears Honey's drunken babbling suggesting that her pregnancy was real and that out of fear she had a secret abortion. George then gets an idea for how to get even with Martha.

Back in the house, Martha is obviously dissatisfied after her sexual encounter with Nick. He blames his performance on the liquor he’s been consuming all night. Martha starts to treat Nick like a servant.

George then appears at the door with a bunch of snapdragons. In yet another game, George starts to throw the snapdragons at both Martha and Nick. George mentions their son, which prompts Martha to reminisce about him. She accuses George of nearly destroying him. George counters, accusing Martha of destructive behavior that caused the boy to frequently run away from home.

George arrives at the door with a bunch of snapdragons.

Nick also learns how thick George and Martha are when he joins in on berating George and Martha turns on him.

George then announces that they had received a telegram with the bad news that their son was killed that afternoon while driving on a country road. George recounts the details of the accident, which sound very familiar to Nick; the boy swerved to avoid a porcupine and crashed his car into a tree. Honey stumbles in just in time to corroborate George’s story about the delivery. When Martha asks to see the telegram, George taunts her that he ate it.

Martha turns on Nick the same as she has on George before.

When Martha argues with George not to "kill" their son, Nick realizes the truth that Martha and George’s son is imaginary. For reasons never explained, they never had a baby and in one more game, they pretend to have a son and invent stories about him. George explains, to Nick and Honey, that their one mutually-agreed-upon rule was to never mention the "existence" of their son to anyone else, and that he "killed" him because Martha had broken that rule by mentioning their son to Honey, earlier in the morning.

The revelation that Martha and George’s son is imaginary isn’t a total surprise as there are hints sprinkled throughout the film. As an example, when Nick and George are outside telling marital war stories, George admits that Martha never had a pregnancy. No doubt both men were too drunk to be paying too close attention to who said what. Honey’s motivation for backing George’s wild tale of the imaginary early morning telegram delivery seems to come out of left field, but she no doubt wants to hurt Martha for sleeping with her husband and sees the story as the best way.

As the sun starts to come up, Nick and Honey quietly finally leave. George and Martha are now left alone. They speak quietly, and in the last lines Martha answers the title question with "I am, George, I am."

George and Martha come to truce after their guests leave.

There is a stark look to the film, which black and white does much better than color, that’s right for the subject matter and mood. And as crisp as the cinematography are, nothing seems to get in the way of the acting or of the dialogue. Black and white is the perfect treatment for this type of story. As with most of the film, Nichols does not seem to hit a wrong note.

Make no mistake about it, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is slow paced. There are no quick cuts and few reaction shots. Director Mike Nichols rather lets the story unfold like a good stage play. With the exception of drinking, there is little stagecraft. Rightfully, Nichols lets the acting carry the day.

Director Mike Nichols on the set with Taylor and Burton.

Nichols knew something about acting himself, having started on the stage. Before directing, he was probably best remembered for his all too brief collaboration with Elaine May. After that comedy duo broke up in 1961, Nichols went back to the stage, but this time more as a director. His big break came when he was chosen to direct Neil Simon’s play Barefoot in the Park. Nichols had found his calling. He would also direct Simon’s The Odd Couple. By 1966, he was very much an in-demand director partially because he knew how to get the most out of his actors.

Elizabeth Taylor shines here, showing a fast range of emotions, though mostly crazed anger throughout. In the hands of a lesser talent, some of her antics could have led to chewing the scenery. But with Taylor, she manages to make Martha seem believable; crazy, but believable.

Richard Burton is also quite remarkable as George. You get the idea both of them feel trapped by the other and rather than take action to change things (divorce, therapy), they weave a web of deception that they hide behind to make life together bearable. They even go so far as to invent a son that is their little secret and seems to be the one thing that binds them together. When that secret is revealed by Martha, things go from bad to worse between them.

And while they are at each other’s throats, both figuratively and literally, throughout, woe be the person who tries to get in between them. As Nick finds out, Martha and George will eat you up and spit you out. Like most people I associate George Segal with more comedic roles, but he really shows that he is a talented dramatic actor as well. He holds his own quite well given the heavyweights he finds himself sparring with on the screen.

Sandy Dennis’ character is on the surface less complex than the other three. She is fragile and sickly, but she is not above participating in the shenanigans, backing up George’s wild story about the nonexistent telegram announcing the death of their nonexistent son. Her motivation in doing so is not apparent, but one gets the idea that she is also a little crazed, perhaps also feeling somewhat trapped in her marriage to Nick.

In fact, as the night wears on, one gets the feeling that Nick and Honey are on their way to becoming their own version of George and Martha. A somewhat loveless marriage in which vows of fidelity are not taken seriously, where babies are imaginary and with a more than generous amount of alcohol showered over the top. Lips are loose and anger over the situation in life simmers just below the surface.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a landmark film in many ways. Its subject matter and use of language, along with Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), was responsible for the MPAA’s film rating system which Valenti unveiled on November 1, 1968 and which, in revised form, still exists today. Though the MPPA required some minor changes and the agreement with theaters showing the film not to allow anyone under eighteen to attend unescorted by an adult, the film was remarkably faithful to the play, something that only four years earlier would have seemed impossible.

When it came to the Academy Awards, the film was only the second to be nominated in every eligible category; the other having been Cimarron (1931). It was also the first film in which all the credited cast was nominated for acting honors; a feat matched twice since, by Sleuth (1972) with two actors nominated and Give ‘Em Hell Harry (1975) in which the lone actor received a nomination. In all, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning five. Not only were Taylor and Dennis winners, but so was Haskell Wexler’s stark black and white cinematography, winning the last Best Cinematography, Black-and-White award before the category was eliminated.

So strong was the acting that the unusual step was taken to release a version of the soundtrack that included all of the film’s dialogue in its entirety. While there were some alternate takes used, this was the only way at the time for the home consumer to relive the film once it was out of theaters. In the days before home video, there was no way that this film would be shown on network television, the only secondary medium available in 1966.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? deserves to be seen. If you’re like me and have it waiting on your DVR then by all means watch this film now. While not necessarily the feel-good film of 1966, unless of course you’re comparing your rather mundane life to the dysfunctional marriages depicted on the screen, it is still very intriguing and in its own way enjoyable.

Stubs – The Graduate

The Graduate  (1967) Starring: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross. Directed by Mike Nichols. Screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Based on the book by Charles Webb.  Produced by Lawrence Turman. Music by Dave Grusin and Paul Simon Run Time: 104 minutes. U.S.  Color. Comedy, Drama, Romance

One of the most acclaimed films of all time, The Graduate is an interesting film. Made at the end of the Production Code, the film features an extramarital affair, nudity and an ending that is anything but a guaranteed happy-ending. The film is notable for the Awards it was nominated for, including seven Academy Awards and for launching the career of Dustin Hoffman (who himself has won two Academy Awards) and cemented the reputation of Mike Nichols.

The Graduate is one of those films that not only captures its moment, the mid-60’s, nearly flawlessly, but also represents a bigger truth. Even with improved employment possibilities, a recent college graduate is likely to feel lost. They have another sixty to seventy to eighty years ahead of them and a whole lifetime of choices to make that will affect career and family. Sudden independence can be a very daunting stage in life and while millions move forward, most are still apprehensive, waiting for some inspiration on what to do next.

The future looks daunting for Benjamin Braddock, The Graduate.

The Graduate tells the story of a strange love-triangle between Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and Elaine Robinson (Katherine Ross). Benjamin is a recent college graduate who returns home to Los Angeles with no real ambitions besides lying by his parents' pool and catching some rays.

Enter the wife of his father’s (William Daniels) business partner (Murray Hamilton), Mrs. Robinson, who asks Benjamin for a ride home after the party celebrating his return home. As subtle as a hammer, Mrs. Robinson is very upfront about wanting to sleep with Benjamin. At first, Benjamin is confused, but ennui sets in and an affair with the older woman gives him something to do at night.

Mrs. Robinson can be as subtle as a hammer.

Even though they have nothing in common and nothing really to talk about, Benjamin spends days in the pool and nights screwing Mrs. Robinson at the Taft hotel, using the name Mr. Gladstone, when he rents the room. Eventually, Benjamin does learn that Mrs. Robinson was forced to leave due to pregnancy with her daughter Elaine and that she’s now stuck in a sex-less and love-less marriage. (This is back before the days of baby-mommas, when it was considered bad to have babies out-of-wedlock.)

Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin don't talk much.

Under pressure from his parents, Benjamin asks Elaine out on a date. Mrs. Robinson is not happy about it, having previously warned him not to date her. Benjamin takes Elaine to drinks at a strip club. Upset, Elaine storms out, but Benjamin catches up with her outside. He apologizes and they end up finding out they like each other. They end up at the Taft Hotel, the same one where Benjamin meets her mother. Everyone knows him on sight, but as a different last name. Elaine even asks him if he’s having an affair, which he reluctantly admits to, though he doesn’t tell her whom it is with.

But Mrs. Robinson is adamant about not wanting Benjamin to date her daughter. She threatens to tell Elaine about the affair if Benjamin doesn’t break it off.  But Benjamin is just as head strong and goes to tell Elaine everything. But Elaine doesn’t take it well and kicks Benjamin out and doesn’t want to see him again.

Benjamin though isn’t done with Elaine and follows her back to school at Berkeley. He gets a room in a boarding house run by Mr. McCleary (Norman Fell). Benjamin sort of stalks Elaine, this in the days before restraining orders were so common, going so far as to accompany her on a date with Carl Smith (Brian Avery), a medical student that her family has known a long time. Elaine confronts Benjamin with the story her mother had told her about Benjamin raping her. Benjamin denies it and Elaine quickly accepts his story and sort of accepts his proposal to marriage.

He follows her around, pestering Elaine to marry him and just when it looks like it will happen, Elaine’s father shows up and tells Benjamin off. Elaine drops out of school and is going to marry Carl. Benjamin drives up and down the coast, from Berkeley to Beverly Hills and back trying to find Elaine. He goes to Carl’s fraternity (wonder how he knew which one) and is told the “make out king” is in Santa Barbara.

Back down to Santa Barbara. In what is one of the movie’s most famous scenes, Benjamin arrives at the church just after nuptials have been said. But his screams from the gallery are returned and Elaine chooses Benjamin over Carl and over her parents. Using a cross to lock the wedding party in the church, Benjamin and Elaine run to catch a bus and their uncertain future with each other.

Is Benjamin really too late?

The ambiguous ending is somewhat hard to understand at first. They are embarking on a future that neither can anticipate. We realize along with them that they don’t really know each other that well and after their rebellious act, real life takes over. Benjamin is a little like the dog who finally caught the car, now what does he do with it. What will become of Benjamin and Elaine? They’re like hero and heroine after an action movie. Do they have what it takes to make the relationship work? I only know that the Braddocks are in for some very awkward Thanksgiving Day dinners.

The happy couple?

The Graduate is a very visual film. Nichols uses an economy of shots, which lets the scenes develop, usually without a lot of editing, letting the actors act out their parts rather than having their performances edited or pieced together. This is not to say that there is not some really great editing that goes on in the film. In a montage sequence we see Benjamin’s leap onto the pool float ends with him on top of Mrs. Robinson in bed, one of the slickest transitions I’ve ever seen.

Music is also very important to the film. There are at least three complete Simon and Garfunkel songs featured, including two back to back. None of the three songs were written for the movie, but were well known at the time, giving them an instant familiarity to the viewers at the time. They are mature, complex, but simplistic and reflect the mood of the story in places where there is no dialogue. Plus there are whole passages of the film that have no music, so the songs carry more impact when they’re heard. “Mrs. Robinson”, the one Simon song written for the movie, is really only a snippet of a song that wouldn’t be completed until after the movie was made.

While there are long passages of the film where there is no dialogue, the script is still filled with memorable lines and effortlessly transitions from comedy to drama. The shooting script was written by Buck Henry, who had to share credit with Calder Willingham, who had written a previous draft. One of the most memorable lines in the film is the one word advice Benjamin receives from one of his father’s friends, “Plastics.” The line is both a non-sequitur as well as a comment on the times. This is the mid-60’s after all, when everything seemed to be in transition, no matter if things really changed or not. Plastic was everywhere, but so was the idea that our lives were becoming fake as well.

My only beef with the script, and it is somewhat nitpicky, but at the same time obvious, is the passage of time. The assumption is that Benjamin is a recent college graduate, which is either late May or early June. His 21^st birthday is about a week after his return home and marks the beginning of his affair with Mrs. Robinson. We get the idea that they are either meeting nearly every night and/or for a period of at least several weeks before Elaine comes onto the scene. But we’re told several times that Elaine is supposed to be coming home from school, all with slightly different arrival dates (this Saturday, next week.) And Benjamin isn’t anxious to ask her out, but I can’t tell if that apprehension lasts a day, a week or a month.

Then he falls in love with Elaine based on the one date, even though they’ve obviously known each other all of their lives, but the only reference is that they knew each other in high school. When he goes back to date her and Mrs. Robinson stops it, they are in the middle of torrential rain, which in LA is a wintertime event. But the summer is bookended by Elaine going back to school, which would be around September. And the wedding, which is hastily thrown together to keep Benjamin away from Elaine, is fairly elegant, a church wedding with a real wedding dress. Not bad for what’s shown to be only a couple of days.

The Benjamin character seems to reflect what was going on at the time with young college students and graduates. Their future was so uncertain that they couldn’t even imagine what would happen to them or what to do with their lives. While it isn’t specifically mentioned, the Vietnam War was going on at this time and so many futures were up in the air, depending on if they were drafted or not.

What was the point of all that hard work in college?

Dustin Hoffman was new to movies, having only recently made a name for himself in New York in an off-Broadway play after laboring for ten years in obscurity. His involvement in the film almost seems to be casting against type, but it is clear he is a natural. His little “yips” throughout the beginning of the film are his anxiety leaking out as he tries to figure out what to do. He is no more in love with Mrs. Robinson than she is with him, but being with her is still the best thing that’s happening to him.

Mrs. Robinson, and we’re never told a first name for her, doesn’t love or even really like Benjamin. She is stuck in a loveless and sexless marriage and only sees Benjamin was a diversion from her otherwise empty life. A confessed alcoholic, Mrs. Robinson is strong and mature, the opposite of the awkward and virginal Benjamin.

Anne Bancroft as the flawed, but provocative Mrs. Robinson.

While Anne Bancroft is in reality only a few years older than Hoffman, she brings an adult quality to the role, making a supposed larger gap in ages believable. She certainly comes off as the one in control of the situation, as she tries to manipulate Benjamin with sex and then blackmail him with threats to expose her own infidelity.

The Elaine character is not as complex as either Benjamin or Mrs. Robinson. While her character is more than one-dimensional, she gets over the shock of her boyfriend having bed her mother quite quickly and completely without very much inner tension. Despite Benjamin telling Mr. Robinson the sex was like nothing more than a handshake, mothers and daughters don’t usually share lovers.

Never take a woman to a strip bar on your first date.

In watching other people talk about Katherine Ross in this film, the first thing they always seem to talk about is how beautiful she is. There is also a purity of essence, which is a big contrast to her alcoholic, chain-smoking mother. Elaine is a simple woman by comparison. I can’t imagine Mrs. Robinson dining in a drive-thru. Elaine provides Benjamin with a chance for a real relationship with a woman he can relate to and one who must be as anxious about the future and her role in it, as Benjamin is about his.

One of the fun parts of watching the film is seeing actors in bit parts. From screenwriter Buck Henry’s turn as a hotel clerk to Mike Farrell (TV's M.A.S.H.’s Dr. B.J. Honeycutt) as a hotel bellhop (look quick) to Richard Dreyfus as one of McCleary’s tenants who offers to call the police after Elaine screams in Benjamin’s room when discussing his past relationship with her mother. Nichols' former comedy partner, Elaine May, even appears as the woman who brings Elaine’s note to Benjamin. Seeing these actors is like adding another layer to the picture.

Mike Nichols not only has a great sense of humor, he was one half of the comedy team of Nichols and May with Elaine May, would go on to have her own career as a writer and director. But he was also well known on the Broadway stage having staged such original Broadway productions as Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple and Annie. He had already made one movie before The Graduate, 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a drama which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, which in many ways was a filmed stage play.

However, in the Graduate, we see a cross between theatrical staging and the capabilities of cinema to adjust the audience comprehension. As an example, after Elaine kicks Benjamin out of her bedroom, he confronts Mrs. Robinson in the hallway. When she tells him what is supposed to be a final goodbye, the camera pulls back elongating the distance between Benjamin and her showing just how alone he is and must feel at that moment.

Mike Nichols (l) directing The Graduate (1967)

Like the songs used in the film, there is a simplicity to The Graduate that belies the complex framing of the shots, the complexity of the story and the mature themes that American cinema was only just beginning to address on screen. The Graduate received a lot of accolades when it was first released, but the film has aged very well and deserves to be seen as the great piece of filmmaking it is. This is one of the best movies from the 1960’s and one of the best movies ever made.

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