These days, the scenario of a neglected wife having an affair with the son of her husband's law partner would be too tame for a TV talk show. It would make it to the air only if the host tried to help the woman work things out after her daughter ran away with her lover.
Back in 1967, the script to The Graduate treated its now-famous wandering wife, Mrs. Robinson, as a predatory comic monster. But thanks to Anne Bancroft, who died Monday, she became the most sensual and complex character in the movie -- and its least-dated achievement.
Director Mike Nichols wanted Jeanne Moreau for the role, but wound up with someone more apt: as Mrs. Robinson, Bancroft became a sensational American Moreau, with a quicksilver erotic ambience plus tinges of warmth and lightness that cement her crack bits of comedy.
The running joke in the movie is that Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) wants to talk and have what future cosmopolites would call a "relationship," while Mrs. Robinson wants sex. But Bancroft shows that Mrs. Robinson likes the sex -- she conveys how it renews her vitality. Rubbing her hands over her lover's chest, she expresses the pleasure this woman takes in being close to a strong young body.
Because Bancroft had such an up-and-down career -- in movies, she started at the bottom, with roles like the femme fatale in the 3-D circus murder story, Gorilla at Large (1954) -- her creation of a milestone character has often been seen as an anomaly. But Bancroft had given two great performances before, in The Miracle Worker (1962) and The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and Mrs. Robinson became a cultural bellwether because of Bancroft's characterization, not because of Buck Henry's writing or Nichols' direction.
When Benjamin disrupts the church where her daughter Elaine has just married a med student, Mrs. Robinson smiles for a second, just before she snarls; it's as if, in her gut, she approves his attempt to save her daughter from something potentially as false and empty as her own marriage.
From Charles Webb's source novel on, the story is conventional; the unfaithful woman must be punished, the true lovers must have their day. Luckily, Bancroft never allows the filmmakers to demonize Mrs. Robinson completely.
The comic Mrs. Robinson sequences really do blend intelligence, sensuality and hijinks. It remains an unqualified delight to see and hear Bancroft turn simple statements and questions into a comic gavotte: "I am not trying to seduce you. ... Would you like me to seduce you?"
