While this movie has become iconic, with the famous seduction scene, the Simon and Garfunkel song, and the unforgettable ending, it's still a bit ridiculous.
First of all, Benjamin is a naive 21-year-old who falls for the mature charms of Mrs. Robinson, who, along with her husband, is part of his parents' social circle, but in real life Dustin Hoffman was 30 and Anne Bancroft was 36, so she wasn't all that much of an older woman. I'm guessing part of the reason for this (the rest being the talent of the actors, who both did a great job in their roles), is that if they had cast a younger actor as Benjamin and an older actress as Mrs. Robinson, audiences might have been bothered by the bed scenes. Having them be real life age contemporaries prevented that.
Also, if the bored, unhappy, frustrated Mrs. Robinson wanted the fun in the sack her husband obviously wasn't providing, why turn to the son of people you play bridge with? She could have trolled the local college campus if she had it bad for young guys, or whatever. She had to know that, sooner or later, they'd be caught. (Unless that was a turn-on?)
And can we really believe for even a minute that Elaine (Katherine Ross) could possibly be happy with a guy that slept with her mother? It may have been the swinging sixties, but she seemed more of a family fifties girl.
There was one scene that's kind of poignant. It's when Benjamin wants to see if he and Mrs. Robinson have something besides sex, and tries to get her to talk about something, anything. She casually mentions art, and then she reluctantly reveals that's what she was studying in college when she got pregnant with Elaine and had to drop out to get married. The regretful tone in her voice when she said the word "art" said it all.
First of all, Benjamin is a naive 21-year-old who falls for the mature charms of Mrs. Robinson, who, along with her husband, is part of his parents' social circle, but in real life Dustin Hoffman was 30 and Anne Bancroft was 36, so she wasn't all that much of an older woman. I'm guessing part of the reason for this (the rest being the talent of the actors, who both did a great job in their roles), is that if they had cast a younger actor as Benjamin and an older actress as Mrs. Robinson, audiences might have been bothered by the bed scenes. Having them be real life age contemporaries prevented that.
Also, if the bored, unhappy, frustrated Mrs. Robinson wanted the fun in the sack her husband obviously wasn't providing, why turn to the son of people you play bridge with? She could have trolled the local college campus if she had it bad for young guys, or whatever. She had to know that, sooner or later, they'd be caught. (Unless that was a turn-on?)
And can we really believe for even a minute that Elaine (Katherine Ross) could possibly be happy with a guy that slept with her mother? It may have been the swinging sixties, but she seemed more of a family fifties girl.
There was one scene that's kind of poignant. It's when Benjamin wants to see if he and Mrs. Robinson have something besides sex, and tries to get her to talk about something, anything. She casually mentions art, and then she reluctantly reveals that's what she was studying in college when she got pregnant with Elaine and had to drop out to get married. The regretful tone in her voice when she said the word "art" said it all.