IT’S ONE OF the most famous
shots in movie history. One of
the most famous lines, too.
“Mrs Robinson,” squeals
Dustin Hoff man to Anne
Bancroft’s older lady, “you’re
trying to seduce me.” Then that
agonising beat. “Aren’t you?”
“Do you want me to seduce
you?” she asks.
In Mike Nichols’ fi lm, the
scene takes place in the bar
area of the Robinsons’
modernist Californian home.
A bar feels natural — fi lled
with jungle motifs, this is Mrs
Robinson’s lair. Bancroft will
reveal a leopard-skin wrap
beneath her dress. QED: she is
the hunter, Benjamin her prey.
The talismanic shot is
framed through an exposed leg
propped on a bar stool, looking
onto a squirming Hoff man. “We
would do whatever we could
think of to express the mood,
the emotion of the scene,”
remembered cinematographer
Robert Surtees. Nichols pushed
his leading man, needling out
Benjamin’s neuroses from
Hoff man’s psyche. “Imagine
you are 12 and she is 20,” he
told his star.
The image to the left,
however, isn’t that shot. It may
be the shot you picture when
you think of The Graduate, but
it is not in the fi lm. Instead,
perhaps recognising its
importance and appeal, the
scene was recreated for a poster
shoot, relocating the arched
knee to the bedroom, distorting
our memory. It’s not even
Bancroft’s leg, but future Dallas
star Linda Gray’s. But then again,
that’s apt for a fi lm whose
production was full of surprises.
Author Charles Webb,
180cm tall, sleek as an antelope,
was writing about his own
species in the novel, and the
producers had a list of potentialBenjamin Braddocks.
Screenwriter Buck Henry
recalled they were all “tall and
blond”. Everyone knew it should
be Robert Redford, but Nichols
looked into his blue eyes and
knew he could never play a loser.
He was going to shape Benjamin
out of brown-eyed Broadway
misfi t Hoff man. “He had to be
the dark, ungainly artist,” said
Nichols. Otherwise, why is he
having trouble in the country
of the blond, blue-eyed people?
Suddenly, the whole movie
made sense.
Nichols had pictured
clean-cut Doris Day as Mrs
Robinson, curdling as booze-
numbed, sexless middle age
gathered her in. That was until
Anne Bancroft fell into his
thoughts. She was too young at
35, but seductive and kind of
brittle, having been cast aside by
Hollywood. She was also an ex.
He remembered her cynicism.
The Graduate is set up as a
symphony of embarrassments,
and none came more awkward
than the sexual proposal made
by Mrs Robinson. During
rehearsal, Bancroft had been
at a loss. Her line readings
were too nice. Nichols couldn’t
explain what was wrong; instead
he showed her, delivering the
pivotal line (“Benjamin, will
you drive me home?”) in
an ice-encrusted deadpan.
Bancroft got it in an instant.
“I know what that is,” she said.
“That’s anger.”
Here is the lightness of
farce anchored with despair.
The more times you return to
the fi lm, the more sympathetic
Bancroft’s performance
becomes. The Graduate is
Benjamin’s comedy, but Mrs
Robinson’s tragedy. IAN NATHANTHE GRADUATE IS OUT NOW ON DVD,
BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOADHow iconic
images came
to lifeThe Graduate
INSTANT
TRIVIA
↓
1
For The Graduate, Mike
Nichols was the fi rst director
to be paid a million dollars.2
In 2007, “Mrs Robinson,
you’re trying to seduce me...
aren’t you?” was voted
among the Top 100 movie
quotes of all time by the
American Film Institute.3
Although Mrs Robinson is
meant to be much older than
Benjamin, Anne Bancroft and
Dustin Hoffman were just
under six years apart in age.4
Hoffman reprised a version
of this scene in The
Simpsons, saying, “Mrs
Krabappel, you’re trying
to seduce me!”“You’re trying to seduce
me...aren’t you?” Benjamin
(Dustin Hoffman) in Mrs
Robinson’s “lair”.Alamy