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

By J.W. Whitehead

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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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786463066
• ISBN13: 9780786463060
• Release Date: January 2011
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher