Most novelists complain that screen adaptations of their work fail to do justice to the original. But Webb's problems with The Graduate proved quite the opposite. The 1967 film version was a satirical tour de force, casting the then untried newcomer Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin, and Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson, the predatory older seductress. It was more than ground-breaking sexual comedy; from The Graduate's ruthless lampoon of small-town values, one can date the 'new' countercultural Hollywood that came to strength in the 1970s through directors such as Bogdanovich, Scorsese, Coppola and Altman.
After this it would be the movie rather than the novel that everyone remembered. The poster of Hoffman's Benjamin, watching as a stocking unpeels from his seducer's extended leg, must now be
