This was in this week's
New Yorker:
Critic's Notebook
AND HERE'S TO YOU
Despite its abject flattery of youth and its sour slander of anyone over thirty-five, Mike Nichols’s “The Graduate” (1967) is still funny. Dustin Hoffman’s virginal panic when the leggy Anne Bancroft methodically bullies him into bed is a classic of mimicry, almost Harold Lloyd-like in its portrayal of courage barely conquering fear of the unknown. What has changed, however, is our perception of Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson. As Hoffman’s Benjamin gets interested in her pretty but vapid daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross), Mrs. Robinson becomes a fairy-tale monster. The movie’s view of her is priggish; all she wants, after all, is sex with a nice-looking boy. Yet Bancroft, whose films are on view March 8-11 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, gives a terrific performance as a bored, frustrated Beverly Hills woman who doesn’t know what to do with her brains. Look at her expression and you see intimations of an entirely justified despair. Mrs. Robinson is the heroine of “The Graduate,” and Bancroft gives the movie its soul.
♦
In the past few years, author Sherman Alexie has ventured into young adult literature with two new books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Flight. His books are sharp observations of growing up Indian among whites.
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