Taking advantage of the recently relaxed US movie production codes, and taking its comic cue from deadpan British movies like Alfie, The Graduate is one of those turning points in Hollywood history – a break with the previous era and a commentary on it.
Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin is every bit an emblem of 60s youth despite never going anywhere near flower power or Vietnam war protests. Instead he observes the vacuous lifestyle stretching ahead of him with disdain.
In an age where alienation is the default teenage stance, Benjamin no longer looks like a counterculture radical, nor does the film's treatment of an Older Woman seem as frank and racy as it must have once done. But The Graduate created a movie mould of which many others have made use. Those Simon and Garfunkel songs are used like mini-music videos within the film, that dry wit is now part of everyday movie vocabulary, and the conflicted young hero who's too smart for his own good is now the norm. Would we have the likes of Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola without it?
