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1、视听说材料背景篇：视听说材料背景篇：The Graduate is a 1967 American comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols.1 It is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and
2、 Calder Willingham. The film tells the story of Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman), a recent university graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who is seduced by an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and then proceeds to fall in love with her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross).In
3、 1996, The Graduate was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant“. IThe theme of an innocent and confused youth who is exploited, mis-directed, seduced (literally and figuratively) and betrayed by a corrupt, decaden
4、t, and discredited older generation (that finds its stability in “plastics“) was well understood by film audiences and captured the spirit of the times. One of the films posters proclaimed the difficult coming-of-age for the recent, aimless college graduate:This is Benjamin. Hes a little worried abo
5、ut his future.The two different generations are also reflected in other dualities: the two rival women (young innocent doe-eyed daughter Elaine and the older seductress Mrs. Robinson), the two California settings (Los Angeles and Berkeley) and S. and N. California cultures (materialistic vs. intelle
6、ctual), and the division in Benjamins character (morally drifting and indecisive vs. committed).There was already a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo and middle-class values, and the breakthrough film mirrored that anarchic mood perfectly for Americas youth of the 60s during the escalation
7、 of the Vietnam War. However, in the final analysis, director Nichols actually subversively portrayed how aimless and unalive the disaffected young generation was (in the character of Benjamin) - and would become as they approached middle-age and worked in sterile corporate settings. In the same yea
8、r, it joined Bonnie and Clyde (1967) as one of the most popular films for the college-aged generation. It was complemented by the music of the popular singing duo Simon and Garfunkel from their Grammy-winning The Sounds of Silence album (with songs composed earlier and previously-released except for
9、 “Mrs. Robinson“), with meaningful, haunting lyrics amidst koo-koo-kachoo sounds to enhance the films moods and themes.Unit 2 The review of Kramer vs. KramerKramer vs. Kramer is a Manhattan movie, yet it seems to speak for an entire generation of middle-class Americans who came to maturity in the la
10、te 60s and early 70s, sophisticated in superficial ways but still expecting the fulfillment of promises made in the more pious Eisenhower era.Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a self-described take-over guy who left Brooklyn for Manhattans East Side and is speeding to the top at his advertising agency.
11、 Everything in his life is working out as planned. When Kramer vs. Kramer opens, the elated Ted has just been handed his agencys most valued new account. As he says a few minutes later, this has been one of the five best days of his life.It is with some surprise, then, that he returns home to find h
12、is wife, Joanna (Meryl Streep), jaw-set and teary-eyed, determined to depart forever, leaving Ted not only with an entire ad presentation to prepare for the next day but also with their six-year-old son, Billy (Justin Henry), to take care of. Ted is not someone who always gets his priorities straigh
13、t.Kramer vs. Kramer is one of those rare American movies that never have to talk importantly and self-consciously to let you know that it has to do with many more things than are explicitly stated. Its about fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and most particularly, perhaps, about the failed expec
14、tations of a certain breed of woman in this day and age.Though much of Kramer vs. Kramer is occupied with the growing relationship between the abandoned father and son, through tantrums and reconciliations and playground accidents, the central figure is that of the movingly, almost dangerously muddl
15、ed mother, played by Miss Streep in what is one of the major performances of the year. Joanna is not an easily appealing character, especially when she returns after eighteen months of therapy in California and seeks legal custody of the child she walked out on.Though beautiful, intelligent, well-ed
16、ucated and no more than casually self- assertive at the start, she grows into one of those fiercely determined people who talks about “finding“ herself even as weand shesuspect there may be nothing to find except another series of compromises. She seems to be a woman in transit to disappointment. Maybe not. Shes not a character who can be conveniently categorized, and she is fascinating.Mr. Hoffman is splendid in one of the two
