Summary Of The Film 'The Graduate'

The Graduate is a 1967 film directed by Mike Nichols. Which tells the story of a young college graduate, who finds himself seeming lost in the real world and in addition, he finds himself torn between a mother and her daughter. The Graduate shows us how difficult the transition from childhood to adulthood could be for college graduates and how aimless it actually is. Mike Nichols uses selective choose in the songs used in this movie, camera angles and the characters to help illustrate this theme. In the opening scene the song “The Sounds of Silence” plays in the background while we see our main character, Ben Braddock, make a decent into Los Angeles. This song has a very low pitched eerie sound to it and the lyrics help illuminate the theme of this movie. The song starts by saying “Hello darkness, my old friend...in restless dreams I walked alone…” the song is giving a sense of loneliness and misdirection. As though you are alone

In this scene there is again the use of a glass window to give off this field of alienation, as though he has yet to make this connection to adulthood that his father, mother and their friends have. This alienation becomes emphasized by the very next scene in which he is in his birthday present, a scuba suit and he is in his pool underwater, all alone and isolated. The song “The Sounds of Silence” replays itself and continues to play after a scene where Ben and Mrs. Robinson are having an affair in a hotel and this scene repeats itself to show the numerous times this occurs. The songs is again reiterating the fact that Ben is uncertain in what exactly he is doing as he seemed nervous and discomfit leading up to the scene of them in bed. Continuing forward, he has a conversation with his father in which he specifically states that he isn’t sure what those 4 years of college were