Charles Webb’s timeless novel The Graduate tells a story of a naive college student who has an affair with his parent’s good friend. However, its success was not based on the story, the sensation was on how the story was told. In Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic The Graduate based on the novel, young Benjamin Braddock is a rising scholar with no direction. Unaware of his promising life he finds himself troubled and confused as to what he wants. The film brought the novel to life with authentic characters with sympathy and edge, the novel The Graduate was the foundation of one the most successful and iconic films in history.
Charles Webb the author of The Graduate was fresh out of college when he wrote the novel in 1963. Only twenty-four years old he produced one of the most influential stories ever told, about the seduction of an older woman towards a young man. The story was based on one of Webb’s fantasies which the reader most definitely gets sense of. In what world would you find a beautiful, charming, experienced, seductive woman wanting the pleasure of a small, young, naïve boy that just graduated college? “The Graduate was about going to college and then actually it was a lot of things, I got interested in the wife of a good friend of my parents and realizing it might be better to write about it, than do it.” (Charles Webb). Charles Webb distinguishably produced fictional characters that were the audience’s private fantasies.
The film’s director Mike Nichols, one of the most influential directors on Broadway at the time, read the novel and immediately wanted to work on it. Although he was in production of [Who’s afraid of] Virginia Woolf he gave the project to different writers until he finally got his hands on it to do it him...
... middle of paper ...
...ere done seamlessly. The suttle differences between the two make this one of the most influential films in American history. The use of musicality in the film also made the film a success and Simon and Garfunkle’s contribution made people even sing the star character of the films name and is referenced frequently.
Works Cited
Escoffier, Jeffrey. "The Second Sexual Revolution." Sexual Revolution. New York: Thunder Mouth, 2003. N. pag. Print.
"Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate." Vanity Fair. Vanity, Mar. 2008. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Kingston, Victoria. Simon & Garfunkel: The Biography. New York: Fromm International, 1998. Print.
"Mike Nichols on The Graduate." Time Out. N.p., 12 Apr. 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
Whitehead, J. W. Appraising The Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2011. Print.
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Impact of the Film, Dr. Strangelove, on American Attitudes Towards the Atomic Bomb and Cold War
Even though Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb screened in the midst of the sobering Cold War, critics were keen on praising the film for its mastery of humor applied to such a sensitive matter. The film is exceedingly loaded with metaphors, innuendos, and allusions that nothing can be left undissected or taken for face value; the resulting effect is understood to be part of Kubrick’s multifarious theme. Kubrick has stated that what began as a “the basis for a serious film about accidental war ” eventually birthed an absurd and farcical classic comedy. The director fuses together irony, satire, and black humor to create a waggish piece but most of all the situation of the times and its gravity is the essence of what the audience finds so hilarious . Using caricatures rather than characters, exaggerated script, and sexual undertones, Kubrick manifests to the audience their own predicament and just how ridiculous it is to even consider brinksmanship as a means to preserve the American lifestyle.
Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, and Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman, both tell the stories of men in the costly pursuit of the American dream. As a result of several conflicts, both external and internal, both characters experience an extinction of the one thing that they have set their sights on.... The American Dream.
When deciding what movie to do for this particular paper I faced a few issues. I knew what the requirements were, but I wanted something different and something I could have fun watching and writing as well. So, after looking around and pondering movies for weeks I finally decided on a perfect choice The 60’s directed by Mark Piznarski?
Ebert, Roger. Rev. of Almost Famous, dir. Cameron Crowe. Rogerebert.com. Chicago Sun-Times, 15 Sept. 2000. Web. 29 March 2011.
”The History of Sexuality” is a three-volumes book, published around 1976 and 1984 by the french historical philosopher Michel Foucault. The three volumes are “An Introduction” (which later is known also as “The Will of Knowledge”), “The Use of the Self” and “The Care of the Self”.
Of all the 1980’s films, that can be described as “Eighties Teen Movies” (Thorburn, 1998) or “High School Movies” (Messner, 1998), those written and (with the exception of “Pretty In Pink” (1986) and “Some Kind of Wonderful”(1987)) directed by John Hughes were often seen to define the genre, even leading to the tag “John Hughes rites de passage movies” as a genre definition used in 1990s popular culture (such as in “Wayne’s World 2” (1994 dir. Stephen Surjik)). This term refers to the half dozen films made between 1984 and 1987; chronologically, “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), “Weird Science” (1985), “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” (1986), “Pretty In Pink” (1986) and “Some Kind Of Wonderful” (1987) (the latter two being directed by Howard Deutch). For the purpose of this study, “Weird Science” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” shall be excluded; “Weird Science” since, unlike the other films, it is grounded in science fiction rather than reality and “Some Kind of Wonderful” as its characters are fractionally older and have lost the “innocence” key to the previous movies: as Bernstein states “the youthful naivete was missing and the diamond earring motif [a significant gift within the film] was no substitute” (Bernstein, 1997, p.89). Bernstein suggests that the decadent 1980s were like the 1950s, “an AIDS-free adventure playground with the promise of prosperity around every corner … our last age of innocence” (Bernstein, 1997, p.1). The films were very much a product of the time in terms of their production (“suddenly adolescent spending power dictated that Hollywood direct all its energies to fleshing out the fantasies of our friend, Mr. Dumb Horny 14 Year Old” Bernstein, 1997, p.4), their repetition (with the growth of video cassette recorders, cable and satellite with time to fill, and also the likes of MTV promoting the film’s soundtracks) and their ideologies.
Rubin, Gail. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." American Feminist Thought at Century's End : A Reader. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman Cambridge, Ma : Blackwell, 1993. 3-64.
Tuss, Alex (Winter 2004). "Masculine Identity and Success: A Critical Analysis of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club". The Journal of Men's Studies 12 (2): 93–102.
The movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was created based on a play with the same name by Edward Albee, which was already a huge success in New York in 1962. For that reason, it was a great risk and challenge for the director and the actors to create a movie based on a play with such high standards.
In the “coming of age” films, The Graduate and Dead Poets Society, the characters are faced with a conflict and must find a way to deal with this conflict. The messages from authority figures to the main characters, the relationship issues, the music used, and the characters’ fathers in both films compare and contrast very well. The films have similar themes, and dissimilar motifs. While both films possess similarities, they also possess differences.
Halperin, David. "Is There a History of Sexuality?." The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry
I will begin my essay by looking closely at the narrative of Sunset Boulevard to see where and how the film represents the Hollywood Studio System. At the beginning of the film the audience is introduced to Joe Gillis, a script writer who is struggling to pay his rent as he in unable to sell his scripts to the ‘majors’ of Hollywood. The film follows Joe to ‘Paramount Pictures’ one of the major studios in Hollywood, which the film pays a large self reference to as the producers of Sunset Boulevard as well as representing the studio system.