One of the most beloved American films of all time, THE GRADUATE is 50 this year and will have a 4K restoration including a 2 week run at the BFI Southbank from 23rd June as part of their Dustin Hoffman season.
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has just finished college and is already lost in a sea of confusion as he wonders what to do with his life. He returns to his parents’ luxurious Beverly Hills home, where he idles away the summer floating in the pool and brooding in silence. He is rescued from the boredom when he is seduced into a clandestine affair with a middle-aged married friend of his parents, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft). That liaison is soon complicated by Benjamin’s infatuation with her college-age daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). Visually imaginative and impeccably acted, with a witty, endlessly quotable script by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (based on the novel by Charles Webb), with a supporting cast that includes William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Walter Brooke and Elizabeth Wilson, THE GRADUATE had the kind of cultural impact that comes along only once in a generation.
