Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson! That movie where you seduce a younger man is legendary, and so are the songs from it, and so is the image where we're looking at Dustin Hoffman from under your leg. The Graduate is a cultural touchstone -- but why? Let's put on the scuba-diving gear our father gave us as a weird graduation gift and plunge into the swimming pool of movie history.

The praise: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and Katharine Ross (as Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine) all got Oscar nominations for their performances, and the film was nominated for best picture, screenplay, and director, too. (Its only win was for Mike Nichols' direction.) It won five BAFTA Awards and five Golden Globes, including best picture and director in both arenas, and numerous critics' awards. Heck, the soundtrack even won a Grammy. The Graduate placed 7th on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the best American movies ever made, and 17th on the 2007 revised list.

The context: The late 1960s were a tumultuous time, as you may have heard, what with Vietnam, riots, student demonstrations, and the Beatles doing acid. The Baby Boomers -- those born in the first several years after World War II -- vastly outnumbered their parents' generation, and were now getting old enough to take charge. As a result, American culture was becoming more youth-oriented. The ideological divide between people in their 50s and people in their 20s became large enough that the term "generation gap" had to be coined to describe it.

Movies from the French New Wave movement had become popular among America's college-aged cinemarati and were starting to inspire American filmmakers. The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and Easy Rider (1969) are credited as the three major films to borrow New Wave techniques and kick off the New Hollywood movement, but The Graduate is far less New Wave-y than the other two. (More on that later.) One thing it has in spades, though, is a relaxed attitude toward sexuality (i.e., one that wasn't Puritanical), which was only now on the verge of becoming common in American movies.

Mike Nichols was already something of a hotshot by the time he won an Oscar for directing The Graduate. He'd had a successful comedy partnership with Elaine May in the late '50s and early '60s, culminating in a Grammy for best comedy album, and was a three-time Tony-winning Broadway director who'd overseen several Neil Simon productions (including the premieres of Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple). He got an Oscar nomination for his first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and was a Big Deal when he won it for The Graduate.

Dustin Hoffman had worked steadily in theater and TV in the 1960s, but The Graduate was his first major film role. Since he didn't look like a traditional leading man, he was perfect for the part of Benjamin, a shy, 21-year-old virgin. (Nichols rejected Robert Redford because no one would believe he'd ever had trouble getting a girl.) To star in The Graduate, Hoffman had to drop out of Mel Brooks' The Producers, where he was set to play the insane Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind. He kept it in the family, though: Brooks' wife, Anne Bancroft, was already cast as Mrs. Robinson.

The reviews were rapturous. The New York Times' Bosley Crowther -- no fan of youth pictures in general, and a fiery detractor of Bonnie and Clyde a few months earlier -- called it "not only one of the best [movies] of the year, but also one of the best seriocomic social satires we've had from Hollywood since Preston Sturges was making them." Crowther urged readers to see it, then see it a second time, "to savor all its sharp satiric wit and cinematic treats." Roger Ebert, then a young and relatively new critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, called it "the funniest American comedy of the year," then proceeded to describe every element of the plot, up through the final scene. Like I said, still new on the job.

The Graduate was a box-office smash, pulling in $49 million in its initial run (on a budget of $3 million), and a total of $104 million after re-releases. Adjusted for inflation, it's the 19th highest-grossing film of all time, selling more tickets than Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace, Forrest Gump, and The Godfather.

What it influenced: The soundtrack album, featuring several songs by Simon & Garfunkel, boosted the duo's profile and made "Sounds of Silence," "Scarborough Fair," and "Mrs. Robinson" gigantic hits. It was one of the first times that a pop-music act provided multiple songs for a movie without there being some obvious connection, like the artist acting in the film. Thanks to the movie and the song, "Mrs. Robinson" became shorthand for a woman who pursued a younger man. You might say to your buddy, "So, how was your date with Mrs. Robinson last night?," and he'd say, "Shut up, she's not THAT much older than me." And you and your other friends would smirk. And so on.

Several moments from the movie became iconic, to be parodied, imitated, and borrowed by countless other films. These include: the first scene of Mrs. Robinson putting the moves on Benjamin; a family friend giving Benjamin one word of advice: "Plastics"; the scene where Benjamin nervously tries to book a hotel room; his escape to the bottom of a swimming pool in a scuba suit; and his frantic attempt to stop a wedding.

The Graduate was adapted for the stage in 2002, with Kathleen Turner playing Mrs. Robinson in both the London and Broadway productions. (Kathleen Turner! Isn't that perfect?) And in 2005 there was a curious film called Rumor Has It..., starring Jennifer Aniston as a woman who learns her grandmother may have been the real-life inspiration for Mrs. Robinson.

What to look for: There are numerous contrasts between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson, and not just the age difference. (In real life, by the way, Hoffman was 30 and Bancroft was 36. He looked boyish; she was made to look older with makeup and lighting.) Mrs. Robinson is experienced in the ways of the world, able to manipulate people and get what she wants, all qualities that elude Benjamin. But notice that he later treats Elaine in much the same way Mrs. Robinson treated him. Apparently he learns quickly.

The film uses several visual techniques to get its point across, most of them subtle enough that a casual viewer might notice something is different from a run-of-the-mill movie without necessarily identifying what, specifically, is being done. (A film textbook I once read used elements from The Graduate to illustrate about a dozen different points, although I think this was due more to the authors' personal fondness for the film than anything else.)

One of the clearest such devices is the way Benjamin is frequently in focus while the people and things around him are blurry. Benjamin is isolated, disconnected from the world, you get the idea. When we first meet his parents, we barely see their faces, focusing instead on his. In other scenes, Benjamin relaxes on an inflatable raft in the swimming pool while his parents and the Robinsons speak to him -- but since they're above him, with the sun directly behind them, all he can see is a bunch of silhouettes and a glare. Throughout the film, the story is told entirely from Benjamin's point of view -- sometimes literally, as in the scene where he puts on a scuba mask, obscuring his and our field of vision, with all sounds blocked out except his own breathing.

Much of the credit for the film's professional, careful visual style should go to the cinematographer, Robert Surtees, who by this time had already shot 50 films, won three Oscars -- including one for Ben-Hur -- and been nominated for four more. He was nominated again for The Graduate and racked up an additional eight nods after that before he retired. What's noteworthy here is that The Graduate is known for being a youth-oriented film, one that spoke directly to the Baby Boomer generation -- yet from a technical standpoint it's largely old-fashioned, using the traditional methods of Hollywood moviemaking. (Maybe that's why the Times' crusty old Crowther was able to enjoy it.) It was a response to the French New Wave in that it centered on disaffected youth and had a "modern" (i.e., European) attitude toward sex, but little of the New Wave's jittery, do-it-yourself aesthetic made it to the screen. One exception: In the moment when Benjamin first sees Mrs. Robinson naked, we suddenly get a flurry of lightning-quick edits, a New Wave hallmark.

It may seem odd that even after he starts sleeping with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin never calls her by her first name. What is her first name, anyway? We're never told. The same goes for all the other older-generation characters in the movie. The only ones with first names are Benjamin and his contemporaries -- another subtle way of expressing the gap between his generation and his parents'.

There's a rather famous image, near the end, of Benjamin pressed up against a church window, his arms outspread. Many viewers thought this was a visual reference to Christ on the cross. But Hoffman later explained that the position of his arms was for a much more practical reason: He needed to appear to be beating on the window without actually doing so, as the minister of the church they were shooting in was watching with a wary eye. So rather than pound his fists against the glass, which was the original idea, Hoffman spread his arms out against it, suggesting urgency without doing any damage. Which is just as well, since a Jesus analogy in this instance wouldn't have made any sense.

What's the big deal: In 1967, as the generation gap was growing wider than it had ever been, The Graduate bridged the chasm. It was aimed at younger audiences, to be sure, but it had enough old-school polish and class for grown-ups to enjoy it too. Young people were questioning the middle-class status quo, while their parents were questioning the aimlessness of the kids these days. Both groups found satisfaction in The Graduate. It may have inspired a generation of cougars, too.

Further reading: For an interesting contrast in opinions, not to mention an example of the generation gap the movie describes, read Roger Ebert's original 1967 review ... and Roger Ebert's reassessment 30 years later, by which time he basically reversed his position on nearly every aspect of it. In 1967, when Ebert was only four years older than Benjamin, he was enthusiastically sympathetic toward that character. In 1997, Ebert was closer to the age Mrs. Robinson was supposed to be, and she was now the character he found most layered, likable, and worthwhile.

Here's Bosley Crowther's rave review in The New York Times. Here's A.D. Murphy's slightly less ecstatic review in Variety; notice Murphy's comment that the film could have been another one of those movies that the kids nowadays like ("boring modern [melodramas]"), but that the strength of the script overpowers Nichols use of "current gimmicks."

A few previous editions of What's the Big Deal? might also be relevant: Bonnie and Clyde, Jules and Jim, Easy Rider.

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Eric D. Snider (website) can't get over the fact that Anne Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks.