The Graduate
A handful of songs that already existed became the inner voice of a young man who had lost his words, while lounge music took charge of the giddy adult world around him.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people who made it ⏳🌊
- ComposerPaul Simon
Sang the film's inner life through existing songs and the unfinished "Mrs. Robinson."
- ComposerDave Grusin
Wrote the lounge and dance cues for the adult world and shared the Grammy for best film score with Simon.
- DirectorMike Nichols
Held on to the songs he had laid in as temp tracks, and won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film.
- ScreenplayBuck Henry
Adapted the novel with Calder Willingham and makes a brief appearance as a hotel clerk.
- StarringDustin Hoffman
His stammering, hesitant Benjamin set the rhythm of the film.
- StarringAnne Bancroft
Her unhurried Mrs. Robinson earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
I. Songs laid in as temp tracks
(Encounter) “The Graduate” was Mike Nichols's second feature, adapted from Charles Webb's novel. It tells of Benjamin Braddock, fresh out of college, who begins an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner, and then falls in love with her daughter, Elaine. Around the time of shooting, Nichols hit on the idea of filling the film with the songs of Simon & Garfunkel, and he entrusted the music to the duo, who were also on Columbia Records. (The man) Paul Simon was a singer-songwriter raised in Queens, New York, who had just made a name for himself in a folk-rock duo with his high school classmate Art Garfunkel. His songs calmly portrayed urban isolation and conversations that never connect. Producer Lawrence Turman is said to have asked Simon for three new songs. (Temp music) But the new songs Simon brought in, “Overs” and “Punky's Dilemma,” did not win Nichols over. In the meantime, Nichols and editor Sam O'Steen had laid the duo's existing songs in as temp music and timed the breathing of the scenes to them. Over months of watching and listening, the songs became inseparable from the scenes. In the end the existing tracks stayed, and the only new song to go in was a single unfinished fragment of “Mrs. Robinson.” (Contrast) The adult world was handed to someone else. Dave Grusin, just starting out in film music, wrote cues such as a dance-band foxtrot and a lounge-style cha-cha. If the duo's songs are Benjamin's inner life, Grusin's music is the respectable, giddy outside world that surrounds him. This approach, making existing popular songs the face of a film, opened the way a step ahead of the works in this series where songs drive the film, such as “Grease” and “Fame.”
II. A young man on a moving walkway
(Airport) The film opens on Benjamin's face as he arrives at Los Angeles airport. He stands motionless on a moving walkway and is carried along. This path, which moves him forward without his having to walk, shows his situation exactly. Over it flows “The Sound of Silence.” (The song) In a low voice, the song paints a nighttime scene in which people talk but no one listens. The two voices move almost fused together and never let emotion burst out. Setting so subdued a song over the homecoming of a graduate whose future looks bright was Nichols's declaration from the very start. This young man is already alone at his own celebration. (The party) Once he is home, his parents throw a party to celebrate his graduation. The adults ask about his future, and someone confides that there is a future in plastics. The air of this passage is made by Grusin's music. Its tidy dance-band sound tells us how smooth, and how empty, the adult world is. (Seduction) When Benjamin slips away from the party, Mrs. Robinson asks him to drive her home. Her house, the drinks, the dark living room follow one after another. Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson takes her time, while Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin stammers and backs away. In this scene the film holds back its songs and builds tension through dialogue and hesitation. This rhythm, in which laughter and unease rise together, becomes the voice of the whole film.
The song that opens the film, enfolding Benjamin on the airport moving walkway. It is used three times in the film and returns in the final scene.
- It was originally recorded in 1964 with a single acoustic guitar. In 1965 producer Tom Wilson, without the duo present, overdubbed electric guitar and drums and released it again, and when this version went to No. 1, the duo's name became known.
- The harmony, with the two voices moving almost glued together in nearly the same rhythm, sounds like one person murmuring alone even though two are singing. It renders in sound the solitude of a graduate being celebrated.
- The same song is placed at the beginning and the end, binding the film together front to back. Because the melody stays the same while the scene around it changes, its meaning reads differently, making it a fine example of a bookend structure (a design in which the beginning and the end answer each other), where a returning tune shifts in meaning.
- It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004.
The music of the adult world, written by Dave Grusin. Its dance-band sound conveys the respectable social air that suffocates Benjamin.
- It sounds like a parody that deliberately exaggerates the stiff decorum of the foxtrot (a brisk social dance popular in America in the 1910s, and the music written for it).
- The slick, horn-led arrangement stands at the opposite pole from the duo's songs for a lone guitar. Thanks to this contrast, whenever a song plays, the screen moves inside Benjamin.
- Grusin took on this film not long after beginning his career in film music that same year with “Divorce American Style.” He would later win the Academy Award for Best Original Score for “The Milagro Beanfield War.”
III. The pool and the hotel room
(The affair) Benjamin finally takes a hotel room and begins meeting Mrs. Robinson. That summer he floats on his parents' pool by day and spends his nights in the hotel room. The two share their bodies but barely speak. (Montage) Nichols and O'Steen wove this summer into a single montage. Benjamin pushes himself up from a raft in the pool and, in the next cut, is on the hotel bed; he passes through a door in his parents' house, and the hotel room appears again. The places change, but his expression does not. Time does not flow; it pools. (The song) “The Sound of Silence” is heard again here, and “April Come She Will” plays under the pool scenes. It is a short song that traces, as if turning the pages of a calendar, how love arrives, lingers and departs as the seasons change. This spare setting, Garfunkel singing alone with Simon's guitar at his side, blends with the languid light of the pool. The seasons in the song move on, while the young man on screen stays where he is. That mismatch is the sorrow of this passage. (The date) Meanwhile his parents badger their son to go out with Elaine. Benjamin reluctantly agrees and sets out to disappoint her on purpose. “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine,” which plays during their first date, is a satirical song that reels off the promises of consumerism in the giddy patter of an advertising slogan. Its jauntiness matches Benjamin's cynicism, until the moment Elaine is hurt, when it turns into ridiculous noise.
The song beneath the summer montage that shuttles between the pool and the hotel room. The seasons pass, yet Benjamin stays where he is.
- The structure, in which love changes a stage with each passing month, is like turning a calendar one page at a time. It suits a montage that shrinks months into minutes.
- Garfunkel sings alone, and Simon's guitar keeps him company with broken chords (arpeggios) that spread the harmony out one note at a time. The languor, as if floating on water, comes from here.
- A short song of less than two minutes. Its very length, vanishing without lingering, resembles a fleeting affair.
- Originally included on the 1965 album “Sounds of Silence,” the song was brought into the film as it was.
It plays during the first date with Elaine. The giddy ad-speak overlays the cynicism of Benjamin, who is deliberately trying to spoil things.
- A song that mocks consumer society in the questioning, promising tone of a television commercial. Simon is said to have written it while living in London.
- Its fast tempo and bright harmonies make it sound cheerful at first, but the meaning beneath the lyrics is cold. This gap between surface and depth meets the discomfort of the date scene.
- The soundtrack album carries a different version from the original record (an alternate take, a separate recording of the same song).
IV. An old song in Berkeley
(Turn) The date that began in spite unexpectedly turns sincere. For the first time, Benjamin opens his heart and truly talks with someone. But the affair with Mrs. Robinson comes to light, and Elaine returns to school in Berkeley. Benjamin drives north after her. (Folk song) The song that envelops this passage is “Scarborough Fair/Canticle.” It weaves the old English folk song “Scarborough Fair” together with antiwar (反戰) lyrics Simon wrote. While one voice sings the ballad of impossible requests made to a former love, the other lays a low picture of the battlefield over it. Both a short interlude version and a long version are used in the film. (Distance) Benjamin rents a room near campus and watches Elaine from afar. He can neither approach her nor leave. The old melody woven by harpsichord and guitar makes a 1960s California campus seem as remote as a scene in a song from long ago. The ballad's speaker, waiting for an answer that will never come, is Benjamin himself. (Outside) While the songs illuminate Benjamin's inner life, the adult world remains wrapped in Grusin's cha-chas and cocktail piano. Charles Burr, who wrote the liner notes for the soundtrack album, called Grusin's pieces the sound of an outside world that is detached, superficial and on edge. The farther Benjamin moves from his parents' house and the company of adults, the larger the share of the film that belongs to the songs. The distance between the two musical worlds is the distance between Benjamin and the adults.
It wraps the passage in which Benjamin, having followed Elaine to Berkeley, watches her from afar. An old ballad that waits for an answer that will never come becomes his heart.
- Over the melody of the English folk song, the antiwar song Simon wrote intertwines as a countermelody (a second melody moving independently at the same time as the main one). With the two songs heard at once, love and war, past and present, overlap.
- The glittering sound of the harpsichord (an early keyboard instrument that plucks a string when a key is pressed) makes a 1960s campus seem like a scene in a song from long ago.
- The album carries, separately, an interlude version of just over 1 minute and a long version of more than 6 minutes. The same song was stretched and trimmed to fit the length of each scene.
- After the film's success, the song was released separately as a single.
V. Until the gas runs out
(Racing) Word arrives that Elaine is soon to be married. Discovering that the wedding will be held in Santa Barbara, Benjamin drives south in his red Alfa Romeo Spider. The California coast road unspools without end. (Unfinished) Over this race flows “Mrs. Robinson.” What went into the film was not a finished song. It was a fragment Simon was still shaping, a tune he had first been humming about Eleanor Roosevelt. Garfunkel mentioned the song to Nichols, and Nichols told him to change the title to the name of the film's character. And so the version in the film is mostly a sharply strummed acoustic guitar and the hum of meaningless syllables. (Pulse) And so in this passage the beat reaches the ear before the words. A short guitar figure rolls like a wheel, and the images flash past. The fact that the song is unfinished actually suits the scene, because Benjamin, too, is racing without having fully decided what he will do. (Halt) Short of his destination, the car runs out of gas and stops, and the song fades too. The film does not splice the broken song back together. Benjamin abandons the car and starts to run. The speed the song had been carrying now passes into a human body. In this moment, when neither machine nor music will carry him any farther, the film's climax opens.
An unfinished song carried on the race toward the wedding. Where the car stops, the song fades as well.
- The version in the film is not a finished song but a fragment. A sharply strummed guitar riff (a short, repeated guitar figure) and a hum of meaningless syllables push the scene along like wheels.
- The original title referred to Eleanor Roosevelt, but at Nichols's request it became the name of a character in the film.
- The album carries two short versions. The first centers on guitar chords, and the second adds a chorus and then ends by fading away, as in the film.
- The finished song came out the following year on the album “Bookends” and as a single, and rose to No. 1 on the Billboard chart. It became the first rock recording to win the Grammy for Record of the Year, but because it was not recognized as a song newly written for the film, it was ineligible for an Academy Award nomination.
VI. The silence returns
(Church) What happens after Benjamin reaches the church is not set down here. Suffice it to say that this passage strips away the song and fills itself with people's voices and commotion. When the song that had spoken his heart for him all summer steps back, for the first time we hear his own voice. (Return) And in the final scene, “The Sound of Silence” returns. The song that opened the film closes it. At first it enveloped a young man standing alone on a moving walkway. At the end, the same melody is set in an entirely different place. Not a single note of the melody has changed, yet the faces it lights have. (Expressions) As the song begins, the actors' faces shift little by little over a few seconds. The giddy breathing subsides, and what remains is the look of someone turning something over. The song neither celebrates this scene nor condemns it. In the same even voice as at the start, it seems to ask what remains once all the words are spent. The audience leaves the theater carrying that question. (Afterglow) The soundtrack album followed the same design. Its first track is the electrified “The Sound of Silence,” and its last is another version of the same song. The album rose to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, and Simon and Grusin shared the Grammy for best film score. “Mrs. Robinson,” completed later, became the first rock recording to win the Grammy for Record of the Year. The larger mark this music left lies in showing that a song already in existence could become the inner heart of a film.
The lesser-known story
Nichols did not accept the first two songs Simon brought for the film, “Overs” and “Punky's Dilemma.” They were not thrown away, though, and both appeared the following year on the duo's album “Bookends.” So great is the film's fame that the fact that songs written for “The Graduate” ended up on another album survives only in liner notes. Why “Mrs. Robinson” was not nominated for the Academy Award for best original song is also unclear. Simon said it was because the paperwork had not been properly submitted, while others pointed out that the song had originally begun, with no connection to the film, as a song about Eleanor Roosevelt. The defining film song of the era is, in effect, absent from the Academy's records. On the album, Grusin's name is said to have stood out less than the duo's. Yet one of his cues, “Whew,” borrows the guitar figure of “Mrs. Robinson” and slyly quotes the melody of “Scarborough Fair.” Here the composer entrusted with the music of the adult world quietly stitched the two worlds together inside the album. The soundtrack album rose to No. 1 on the Billboard chart, and the record that took over that spot was the duo's own new album, “Bookends.” The wind the film stirred up, in effect, lifted the duo's next work as well.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Temporary music (temp track)
(Word origin) Temp is short for the English temporary. A track is a single strand of recorded music. (In film·musical-theater music) Laying down other music for the time being during editing, when the real film score does not yet exist. The editor sets the length and rhythm of the scenes to this music. It is usually replaced with new music later, but “The Graduate” kept the songs it had laid in temporarily. It is much like rehearsing a dance for a school show to whatever song happens to be on, and then, when performance day arrives, finding that nothing else feels right, so you end up taking the stage to that very song.
Montage
(Word origin) From the French monter, meaning to assemble·to fit together. A montage is something made by fitting pieces together. (In film·musical-theater music) An editing technique that strings many short shots together rapidly to show a long stretch of time or a repeated routine within a few minutes. In such cases, a single song rather than dialogue often binds the shots into one. In “The Graduate,” a summer spent shuttling between the swimming pool and the hotel room is painted as a montage. In sports movies, the scene where the hero's months of training whiz by over the course of one song is exactly a montage. (Elsewhere) In a police investigation, a montage means a picture of a suspect's face, drawn by combining eyes·nose·mouth according to a witness's account.
Overdubbing
(Word origin) A combination of the English over ('on top') and dub ('to add sound'), meaning to lay new sound over sound already recorded. (In film·musical-theater music) The process of separately recording other instruments or voices and layering them over a song or performance recorded earlier. “The Sound of Silence” originally had only one guitar and two voices, but it was later reissued with electric guitar and drums overdubbed. It is like painting over a pencil sketch you drew first in art class. The underdrawing stays the same, yet the feel changes completely.
Folk rock
(In film·musical-theater music) Music that adds rock-band instruments such as electric guitar and drums to plain, ballad-like songs (folk). It was hugely popular in the United States and Britain in the mid-1960s. Because its lyrics often carried stories or ideas, it was well suited to voicing a film character's inner thoughts. If you and your friends took an old song your grandmother taught you, arranged it for a band, and sang it with guitar and drums, that would be close to folk rock.
Opposing melody (countermelody)
(Word origin) Dae (對) means 'to face.' The word daeseonyul ('facing melody') names another melody that stands face to face with the main melody and moves along with it. (In film·musical-theater music) A second tune that flows at the same time as the main tune, in a different shape. The two melodies blend without clashing, and each can tell a different story. In “Scarborough Fair/Canticle,” the old ballad is the main melody and the section singing of war is the countermelody. Think of it as two people singing different songs from the very start, unlike a round, yet arranged so they fit together. It is much like a cheering contest on a school sports day, where one side sings a song and the other shouts a different chant, and together they make a single cheer.
Riff
(In film·musical-theater music) A guitar or other instrument repeating a short figure over and over to form the backbone of a song. The guitar sound that comes to mind before the lyrics after you hear a song is usually the riff. In the film version of “Mrs. Robinson,” a sharp guitar riff rolls like a wheel and drives the chase scene. Just as you jump in time when your friends turn a long jump rope at a steady pace, a riff is the rope of repetition the whole song rides on. (Elsewhere) The English word riff can also mean wordplay or an improvised string of jokes.
Score
(In film·musical-theater music) Background music newly composed for a film. The term distinguishes it from songs that already existed and are borrowed. In “The Graduate,” the cues Grusin wrote come close to a score, while most of the Simon & Garfunkel songs were pre-existing. Even so, the two shared the Grammy for best film score. If background songs newly written to fit the script of a school play are the score, a favorite singer's song played as is would be an inserted song. (Elsewhere) In sports, a score means the points in a game.