otheruses
The Graduate is a
American comedy-drama film directed by
Mike Nichols, based on the 1963 novel
The Graduate by
Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from
Williams College. The screenplay is by
Calder Willingham and
Buck Henry, who makes a
cameo appearance as the hotel clerk. 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 1996,
The Graduate was selected for preservation in the U.S.
National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It ranked as the seventh greatest film of all time on
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies and placed #18 on the
list of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada, adjusted for inflation.