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DUSTIN HOFFMAN DOUBLE FEATURE
February 29, 2020  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 6:00 p.m. ET

 
Here comes another TCM double feature featuring the same actor, and this one really shows the subject’s range. From 1967, it’s The Graduate, in which Dustin Hoffman, as Benjamin, drives a spiffy sports car through a particularly bumpy stretch of his life, just after college graduation. He has an affair with the wife of a friend of his father, then becomes attracted to their daughter. What to watch for, in this relentlessly clever film directed by Mike Nichols, with music by Simon & Garfunkel? Everything. But one of my favorite moments comes late in the film, at the gas station, when the attendant is giving directions very slowly, when Benjamin is in a major hurry. So Ben slams his hand down in frustration – and to punctuate the gesture musically, Paul Simon, on the soundtrack, strums a loud guitar chord in perfect unison. Never saw that before. Never saw it since. The Graduate is on at 6 p.m. ET, and is followed at 8 p.m. ET by 1982’s Tootsie, in which Hoffman plays two roles, only one of them a man. What to watch for here? How about the performances by two actors who were all but dismissed at the time, but who have amassed tons of praise in the decades since: Jessica Lange and Bill Murray.
 
 
 
 
 
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