The Graduate

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"The Graduate" is an album of songs from the soundtrack of Mike Nichols' movie The Graduate, featuring many songs from the folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel as well as several instrumental pieces by Dave Grusin. The music meshed perfectly with the themes of the film, the album topped the charts, and it introduced Simon & Garfunkel to a wider audience.

Benjamin Braddock, un étudiant fraîchement diplômé, ne sait pas quoi faire de son avenir. Lors d'une soirée mondaine chez ses parents où il vagabonde, il fait la connaissance de Mrs Robinson, l'épouse du patron de son père. La femme, d'âge mûr, entreprend de séduire le garçon et y parvient très rapidement. Benjamin découvre les joies du sexe et profite de la situation du haut de ses 21 ans. Mais les choses se compliquent lorsque Monsieur Robinson demande à Benjamin de sortir avec Elaine, sa fille. Le jeune homme accepte et en tombe amoureux, s'attirant par la même occasion les foudres de Mrs Robinson. Cette dernière, folle de jalousie, décide d'empêcher leur union en proposant sa fille en mariage à un autre homme.

The Graduate (1967) is one of the key, ground-breaking films of the late 1960s, and helped to set in motion a new era of film-making. The influential film is a biting satire/comedy about a recent nebbish, East Coast college graduate who finds himself alienated and adrift in the shifting, social and sexual mores of the 1960s, and questioning the values of society (with its keyword "plastics"). The themes of the film also mirrored the changes occurring in Hollywood, as a new vanguard of younger directors were coming to the forefront. Avant-garde director Mike Nichols, following his debut success of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) with this second film, instantly became a major new talent in American film after winning an Academy Award for his directorship.

“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?” When The Graduate premiered in December 1967, its filmmakers had only modest expectations attached to what seemed to be a small, sexy, art house comedy adapted from an obscure first novel by an eccentric twenty-four-year-old.