The Graduate

The evening screening of The Graduate on April 7 at Muranów cinema will be preceded by a 15-minute TEDx-style talk led by Maciej Jarkowiec.

Benjamin Braddock has recently graduated from college. As would befit a young man from a good Californian family, could immediately fall into a career in the industry, or in “one word, plastics.” Instead, he lounges by his parent’s pool and is seduced by their friend (Anne Bancroft), who is 20 years his senior.

Robert Redford was set to play the role of Benjamin, but director Mike Nichols decided that the star was too good-looking. And so, the unknown Dustin Hoffman was cast. At the time, in order to pay his rent, Hoffman combined theatre work with waiting tables. The equally little-known duo Simon & Garfunkel composed songs for the film’s soundtrack. The Graduate doesn’t feature hippies, Vietnam War, nor race riots. Instead, the younger generation’s rebellion against old America is evoked through an escape from a church in which hateful hypocrites are trapped behind a crucifix-locked door. Hoffman blazed the trail for an ugly, new kind of acting, and The Graduate blazed pioneered a new, brattish Hollywood.

Maciej Jarkowiec

Mike Nichols (1931–2014) was one of the most influential American directors, a master of sharp storytelling and incisive dialogue. His film The Graduate (1967), became a defining film of New Hollywood and won him an Oscar. Before that, he impressed with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and later delivered keen explorations of human relationships in Silkwood (1983) and Closer (2004). Blending psychological depth with subtle humor, he was also a celebrated theater director. As a winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, his legacy remains a cornerstone of modern cinema.