Nominated for seven Academy Awards® and winner for Best Director, this ground-breaking and "wildly hilarious" (The Boston Globe) social satire launched the career of two-time Oscar®-winner Dustin Hoffman and cemented the reputation of acclaimed director Mike Nichols. Pulsating with the rebellious spirit of the '60s and a haunting score sung by Simon and Garfunkel, The Graduate is truly a "landmark film" (Leonard Maltin). Shy Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) returns home from college with an uncertain future. Then the wife of his father's business partner, the sexy Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), seduces him, and the affair only deepens his confusion. That is, until he meets the girl of his dreams (Katharine Ross). But there's one problem: she's Mrs. Robinson's daughter!

Also worth noting in particular is the direction of Mike Nichols. He truly gives the film a unique visual style to make it an experience rather than just a comedy/drama. Note the opening credits with Hoffman on an airport moving sidewalk set to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence". Nichols' uses cuts very interestingly in several scenes such as the scene where Benjamin jumps up on his raft in the pool, and lands in bed with Mrs. Robinson. He also uses zooms to great effect throughout the film. Nichols' Best Director Oscar for this film was well-deserved. I think that Hoffman's performance should have won also, as well as the screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry.

One other thing that I must mention is that The Graduate absolutely must been seen in its original aspect ratio! If you're not watching a widescreen version, then you're not watching The Graduate. The film was shot in the Panavision process with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Mike Nichols makes wonderful use of the 2.35:1 frame, so the film will be absolutely botched in pan and scan. If you watch The Graduate in full-screen pan and scan, you're really, really missing out. The visual impact of the film will be irreparably damaged.

The DVD is adequate, but this film deserves much better. The disc is labeled a special edition, but it's really too skimpy to be that. At very least you're getting a widescreen version of the film. However, the transfer is not enhanced for 16:9 televisions. What we need is a fully remastered 16:9 transfer which would be immensely beneficial. The picture quality is fair, but could be so much better. It's really stunning what difference a brand new remastered 16:9 transfer can make for an older film like this. Just look at the new DVD of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The film also deserves better supplemental materials. A better documentary and a commentary by the filmmakers would be great. A seperate commentary by Dustin Hoffman would be even better. I'm convinced that someday The Graduate will receive a worthy DVD edition, and I will wait until then to purchase it.

60 of 64 found the following review helpful:


'Graduate' graduates  Jul 21, 2007 By Flipper Campbell
Looks like MGM finally is giving "The Graduate" a grownup DVD.

The Mike Nichols film has suffered through the DVD era so far, represented by a series of double-dip issues that perpetuated the same sorry source materials: grainy picture, grating audio -- the typical first-generation DVD blahs.

Here comes "The Graduate: 40th Anniversary Edition," due Sept. 11. Fox's specs show 2.35:1 widescreen with DTS and Dolby Surround. This appears to be in true widescreen. (The previous DVDs' version apparently was created by throwing letterboxing atop the full-screen version. Seems the guy who was so big on plastics got into the home video business.)

Check out the new extras:

* Commentary by Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross
* Commentary by director Nichols and Steven Soderbergh
* Retrospective documentary that interviews "Graduate" write Buck Henry, producer Lawrence Turman, Richard Roeper and some random others.
* "Coming of Age: The Making of The Graduate" featurette
* "Would You Like Me To Seduce You: The Seduction Scene Revisited" featurette

Along with some odds and ends ported over from the older discs.

Disc 2 has a pleasant surprise: Simon & Garfunkle's soundtrack, in CD form.

I'll be revisiting the film for Hoffman's sonic boom of a breakout performance; the "Mrs. Robinson" song and seduction scene; and Ross' beautifully naturalistic presence. Koo-koo-ka-choo.

105 of 120 found the following review helpful:


Shame, Shame, Shame...  Oct 04, 2005 By E. Dolnack
They re-release the Graduate on DVD in 2005 only to distribute the EXACT SAME product only without a very attractive interface and special features, but with the same crappy picture and sound quality!

I give the film "The Graduate" from 1967 as many stars as any ratings measure can grant, but this DVD is a very poor represntation that is disrespectful of the genuine classic piece of cinematic art and cultural revolutionary comedy-piece that this movie was and always will be!

It's a shame. The picture is still grainy and the "widescreen" is still a full-screen image with black bars at top & bottom and NOT a true 16X9 formatted image for widescreen televisions! This true masterpiece of film demands nothing short of the best optimization that current-day technology can (and should) provide! Anything less is completely unacceptable! I'm sorry, but this is a travesy. The Graduate deserves the most pristine image and sound quality that the DVD format can give and viewers should demand nothing short of that high-standard of excellence.

The sound is in a lousy mono and the picture is fuzzy at times, desaturated, grainy, noisy, and compressed too much. The producers of this DVD obviously aren't die-hard fans and did a half-a** job here. Most fans of this film would gladly pay a few extra dollars for a better version, so why go cheap on such a great classic is beyond me?!? That's just a moronic business decision of a cheap corporation that doesn't know art from a hole in the ground, always cutting corners to salvage every penny. For shame!

I wish the Criterion Collection would remaster the Graduate and finally do it right! Amen.

28 of 29 found the following review helpful:


Outstanding movie, crummy DVD  Dec 05, 2001 By David C. Read
This movie was groundbreaking when released, and it is now a classic. The screenplay by Buck Henry is great, Mike Nichols did an outstanding job directing, and all the key parts were cast and acted perfectly. The great Simon & Garfunkel music helped to make the film what it became. AFI ranked it #7 on its list of the top 100 American movies, and I agree. I think it is that good. I saw it on TV when I was teenager, and have rented it or seen it on TV several times since then. It has always been one of my favorite films. I even read the novel by Charles Webb (to which the movie stayed pretty close).

Unfortunately, this DVD does not do it justice. The main problem is the audio. The sound track is just ever so slightly out of sync with the picture throughout the entire film. In one scene, when Benjamin's mother confronts him about his nocturnal activities, the problem is extremely noticeable. The sound is mixed badly throughout, especially during the second half of the film, when Benjamin starts seeing Elaine (Katherine Ross). Crucial dialog is drowned out by sound effects. By the end, you have to crank up the volume on your TV to wake-up-the-neighbors levels just to hear what the characters are saying. This is inexcusable. I also note, from an earlier review, that the laserdisk version had a director's commentary, so why doesn't the DVD?

Some day, they'll put out a good DVD version of the movie, until then we'll have to be content with VHS and Turner Classic Movies.

26 of 27 found the following review helpful:


Not all copies include DVD extras  Sep 10, 2009 By JDS
The Graduate of course is in my top 5 favorite films. So of course I had to upgrade to Blu-ray.

I was excited that all the reviews say that the DVD included the extras from The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)

The DVD that came with my Bluray however did not. The version that came with mine was the 2005 MGM DVD release that only includes the trailer and 4:3 (not 16:9) letter-boxed version of the film. The Graduate

It seems Fox is just throwing in whatever DVD copies they have on hand so while some people are getting the 40th Anniversary DVD not all copies include that version.

Admittedly the packaging doesn't say that any of the DVDs extras are included but it's still disappointing when you read in reviews that they are included only to find that they are not in the copy you get. It's a weak move on Fox's part to include the DVD with extras in some copies and not in others.

I contacted Fox about this and they aren't willing to do anything about it.

So buyer beware NOT ALL COPIES INCLUDE THE DVD EXTRAS and there is no way to tell whether or not it does without opening it.

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