The film tells the story of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a recent college graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.
The Graduate is exciting because it captured a specific moment in time culturally, but within its three main characters, it captures timeless themes of feeling desperate, lost, and confused.
Be agog at Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson in some of the most hilariously icky seduction scenes ever filmed. See Mike Nichols (with help from Simon & Garfunkel) take control of the Zeitgeist. See the mood go dark -- darker than you remember.
Dustin Hoffman gives the inspired performance that launched his movie career, and director Mike Nichols shows a gift for social satire that has never glistened quite so brightly since.
"Never trust anyone over 30" is a slogan that could have served the Restoration as well as it does our own time, and Nichols makes the old formula seem as topical as mini-skirts.
The emotional elevation of the film is due in no small measure to the extraordinarily engaging performances of Anne Bancroft as the wife-mother-mistress, Dustin Hoffman as the lumbering Lancelot, and Katherine Ross as his fair Elaine.
As it stands, the vacuum of that warped, moneyed Los Angeles society is too exaggerated, too incredible. But one can't help but believe in Hoffman if not in the disjointed character he portrays.
